Keep Calm and Carry On
by chezchuckles
Summary: 3 word prompt - kate drunk london — ANONYMOUS
1. Chapter 1

**Keep Calm and Carry On**

* * *

 _3 word prompt - kate drunk london_

 _— ANONYMOUS_

* * *

"I shouldn't have come," she moaned. Her head throbbed, her eyes were two stones sunk into the soup of her sockets. Her face hurt. "This was such a bad idea. Oh fuck."

Hunt caught her hair and held it off her neck; his fingers teased and made her shiver. "It was a perfectly wonderful idea," he said. His voice was liquid sex. She hated herself for wanting him. "It's possible you had too many fireballs." His eyes twitched like Castle's when he was amused. "And you perhaps took some liberties-"

"I tried to hump one of those fur-hatted palace soldiers. Oh God." She bowed her head over the hedge where she could still smell her vomit, and she groaned even as Hunt laughed.

"You did. However, I have connections and you're fine. No charges."

 _Charges_. Oh God. Oh God, she should never have bought the plane ticket. What the hell had she been thinking? When he had come to her crime scene with the blonde, she hadn't even flinched. (Well, only a little.) When he had come and gone at will through her precinct with that 'just had sex' face, she had steeled herself.

So why the hell had his 'fun and uncomplicated' inspired _this_?

(Because he was a man of words. Actions were one thing, actions she had learned from _him_ not to believe. Words. Words had power, and she was as miserable inside as out).

"Katherine?"

"It's Kate," she growled, clenching her jaw around her own damn name. Hunt couldn't even be bothered to get it right.

"While getting pissed - drunk, I mean - and grinding against a Queen's Guard doesn't put me off. The - uh - sick does."

Put him off?

"If you think you're done, we can head for a public loo, let you clean up. Go back to your hotel and make this worth-"

"Oh God," she moaned, slamming her eyes shut.

There was a moment of silence. Then. "Is that a no?"

" _No_ ," she snapped. "Hunt. Just - go."

"I can't leave you here. It's three in the morning, Katherine-"

" _Kate_." She rounded on him, her hand balled into a fist, but her own seasickness made her too unbalanced to throw the punch. Instead she wound up swaying back into the hedge, twigs snagging at her clothes.

He reached for her, his fingers around her elbow to drag her upright. His touched burned. Her throat burned. Her eyes.

She couldn't even do _this_. Castle could parade fun and easy flight attendants through her precinct, but she couldn't even go through with this. Hump a Queen's Guard, but when it came to touching Hunt, letting him touch her, kissing him - her first reaction was to vomit in the bushes.

"I'm not leaving you here."

"You don't need to protect me," she rasped, wiping the back of her hand against her mouth. "I'm sober now."

And she was.

Dead sober.

Hunt refused to leave her side. His chivalry was antagonizing, considering he'd been angling for sex even after she'd thrown up. Now he was trying to usher her quickly back to her hotel room.

A hotel room she didn't have.

"Call me a cab," she got out. Her hand shook as she scraped her hair back off her face. Her mouth was the pit of hell. "Get me a cab, put me in it, and go home, Hunt."

"It's Hunt now, is it?"

She eyed him.

He put up both hands in 'calm down', and then he fished out his phone from his back pocket. She was working hard to keep it together, to look put-together.

It took everything in her power to not hit him. Asshole.

Except she knew it wasn't _him_ she wanted to have it out with. She'd bought a fifteen hundred dollar plane ticket to prove something that wasn't even true.

Her heart actually was broken.

When the cab pulled up, Beckett crawled in. She didn't look at Hunt, didn't wave, and he had stopped trying to talk her into a toothbrush and a hotel room.

"Where to?"

"Heathrow," she croaked, tilting her head back against the seat.

She closed her eyes but it made the tears slip down her cheeks.

Pathetic. She hated him. She did. She _hated_ him.

So why did she have her phone in her hand and her thumb hovering over his contact? Why, even as she was shaking with exhaustion and dehydration and bitter drunken sobriety, was the heat of her thumb already calling him?

Oh, _God._

And he answered.

That curt command of her name, such anger in it. Why did _he_ get to be angry? He was the one who'd gone to Las Vegas for more setting-curtains-on-fire one-night-stands.

" _Beckett_. You called _me._ Answer your damn phone."

She stared at it, astonished that every word came to her so clearly, astonished she had actually called him.

She put the phone to her ear. "N-never mind."

"No, you ruined my evening. You tell me what the problem is. Another case? I don't feel like it. So-"

"I'm in London."

Air punched out over the line; she heard the drag of his breath back in. "London. England."

"I'm hanging up," she grit out, pulling it away from her ear.

But he yelled her name through the phone - _yelled_ \- and she flinched hard enough to startle the phone back to her ear.

"You better not hang up on me. London? Are you kidding? Calling me to what, Beckett, brag about it? How long did it take to let him fuck you?"

"How long did it take you?" she bit out. "With your flight attendant. Driving that _car,_ Castle. I love that car." She snapped her eyes shut and shook her head. Stupid. He wasn't hers to-

She lowered the phone and ended the call, curled her knees up to her chest to keep her stomach from rolling.

The phone buzzed in her hand and she ignored it. Silenced it, her eyes fixed on the world outside, tried to keep from getting motion sick with the slip and slide of the city past the window.

This had all been such a mistake.

—–

 **A/N:** This started as a fill, but has turned into a beast on tumblr. So I'll post here to give you an easier place to read the whole story.


	2. Chapter 2

—–

Her return flight to New York wasn't until noon tomorrow. Today. It was far past midnight so today. Twelve more hours.

She curled her knees up into the hard cushion of the seat and pressed her forehead to her thighs. The cost to change her flight to an earlier one had been more than she had in her savings, and if she got really desperate she could carry a balance on her credit card but-

But she'd been shot in the chest recently and that - oh, surprise! - had turned out to be damn expensive. Her savings had been wiped out paying hospital deductibles and therapy costs and updated security for her apartment when she'd been at her worst PTSD-wise. She _had_ no more money.

So she was sitting here until her flight was called to board, which would be somewhere around 11:25 am local time. All she could do. She deserved her punishment. She'd bought a plane ticket because her heart was broken, and that had been - always was - a stupid move.

She should know better by now. He'd taken his publisher and second ex-wife to the Hamptons because he'd met a little friendly resistance from her. He was as shifting as sand under her feet, and she'd been reckless to trust it. This _feeling_. Feelings never stayed.

She had no idea how long she'd been rocking like a wounded animal, but the alcohol haze had settled to a mere fog and she was aware of herself now.

God. She was not allowed to cry in Heathrow's international terminal. She had made a mistake chasing after debonair Colin Hunt; she had not thought it through. She'd been hurt, and she'd been lashing out (at _Castle_ who was impenetrable to that kind of thing, seriously), and now she had to deal.

Beckett lifted her head and swiped at her cheeks, saw fellow passengers eyeing her with trepidation.

Okay. She needed to get herself together.

She unfolded from the uncomfortable lines of the chair and stood, shuffling awkwardly towards the main hall. She needed a bathroom, a chance to get clean again, slap some water on her face. Look at herself hard in the mirror for a few minutes until she could stomach it again.

—-

She was somewhere around her sixth hour of waiting when the PA system screeched and an airline associate shakily apologized for the feedback. But Beckett lifted her head and looked around for the first time since her robotic bathroom trip, and she saw Heathrow had filled with early morning commuters.

And the announcement was something about a gate change.

Her heart clutched. It was nine in the morning - no, worse, it was nearly ten now - and she hadn't been paying attention. Zoned out, a semi-functional version of catatonic.

She struggled to her feet and started searching for a departure board, her chest clenching with the precursor to that free-floating anxiety. She couldn't have a panic attack in the airport only hours before her departure; she couldn't.

She had to find the departures board.

Once in Chicago on a forty-five minute layover, her gate had been changed three times, two of those between _terminals_. She had experience with this; she knew better. She should've been listening to the announcements. She should have been checking the board every few hours.

Of course. It had changed.

Her flight had changed. Gates, not terminals, but it was five after ten in the morning and she had to hustle down a few moving walkways towards the new one.

God. She was phenomenally screwed up. She was an intelligent independent woman who had accomplished difficult objectives, and yet she couldn't keep herself together long enough to survive Richard Castle?

Arrogant jackass didn't deserve her heartbreak.

Arrogant jackass who made her coffee in the break room and then slipped it into her hand and even closed her fingers around the mug as she blazed a trail of glory through the precinct, all righteous indignation and fiery purpose.

Arrogant jackass who sat in his chair with those dopey sad eyes and asked her why his daughter couldn't be a little girl forever so she'd never be hurt or disappointed again.

(Oh God, but he was _her_ arrogant jackass, everything she needed, he fit right at her side - he had _made_ himself to fit at her side, made himself her right hand - and how was she ever going to-)

"Castle?" she croaked.

He was striding right for her.

She was frozen, but the walkway kept moving under her feet and it dumped her, spilled her right in front of him disgracefully.

She staggered upright and his face transformed with astonishment. "I thought I'd have to comb the whole city for you," he said. His face flushed with anger. "What the hell is going on."

"I…" He'd flown to London to comb the city for her? "I don't know."

His nostrils flared. She had just noticed, painfully, that he hadn't touched her, had very specifically held himself back from touching her. He had used to hook his fingers at the inside of her arm to give her that subtle support, he would have cupped her elbows to straighten her after she'd stumbled.

But not now.

"I don't know what's going on," she choked out. "But I hate it." She slid around him towards the next moving walkway. "I need to go home."

She was whipped around by the grip of his hand at her arm, a harsh grab, bruising fingers. She was confronted by the anger rolling across his face, the lines of stone.

He leaned in even as he pulled her too close, aggressively close. "No. I bought two return flights for tomorrow - afraid it'd take me twenty-four hours to find you - so we are going to take that time to talk."

She set her jaw and pulled her arm out of his grip. "I paid for this ticket, I reap what I sew."

Something of that hardness left him. It wasn't soft, but the edge receded. He didn't try to grab her again, but his eyes searched her face. "You didn't sleep with him."

She would hit him but airport security would arrest her and she'd never get out of here.

"Kate. I didn't sleep with her either."

—–


	3. Chapter 3

—–

"You don't have a hotel room?"

They spoke in stereo in the middle of the taxi stand before an open car, each of them bewildered and skittish. She felt as if she'd been ground with road grit, her skin too raw and her eyelids scraping. "I didn't have time to…"

"Me either," he muttered, gripping the door of the taxi. "Just get in, Beckett. I'll figure it out."

"I'd rather-" Except she wouldn't rather. She wouldn't rather anything that didn't include him - the version of him she had grown to depend on these last four years.

She swallowed back the urge to ask if that was the version she'd be getting, and instead she crawled into the backseat of the taxi. She was still wearing the dress slacks and shirt from work… how many days ago? Just one? The time difference had scrambled her head.

And the hangover.

Castle collapsed beside her, none of his usual grace, his body crushing her shoulder for an instant. He slammed shut the door as the driver put the car into gear, and then Castle was shifting away.

Her body washed with ice and she remained alone on her side of the backseat.

Kate stared out of the window, the complex movement of traffic at Heathrow. She had no idea what hotel address Castle had given the man, resigned herself to another suite with too much of his personal history, too many reminders of the ways she didn't measure up.

She didn't measure up.

That was - essentially - everything.

She closed her eyes and pressed her forehead to the window, swallowing down the urge to cry.

She longed for things she couldn't express, couldn't even formulate an image for in her heart. Things that would feel good and warm, things that were easy and smooth. She no longer had her mother to run to, and she had this nagging feeling she had missed out in life by not having a favorite stuffed animal to sleep with.

She would want _that_. She needed her mother but that would have sufficed. Bury her hot eyes in its fur.

But no teddy bear for Kate. No night-light in the darkness. All she had ever had was her own will and the black surrounding her, the certainty that it would not end like this.

She swallowed roughly and straightened up. Knotted her hands in her lap.

"You didn't have to come," she said finally.

"Yes. I did." A harsh breath that sounded more like an oppressed anger than the melodrama she was used to. "Partners."

It stung. "So partners is a pick and choose concept now? We get to decide on-again, off-again?"

She could _feel_ him ragged and angry beside her, even if she wouldn't look.

"I don't know, Kate. You. Tell. Me."

"It's not," she snapped, jerking her head around to glare at him. "It's not. You don't get to be my partner only when you feel like it. If that's how it-"

"Me? _What about you?"_

Why did she have the sudden tight urge to crush his mouth into silence - with her own mouth? Shove her tongue down his throat and _prove_ -

"I'm still here," she rasped instead, leaning back against the seat and avoiding his gaze. "I don't know where you went, but I'm still here."

"Here? Here is _London_ , Beckett."

"And you went to Vegas," she parried, lips curling in disgust. "So?"

"I didn't-" He stopped and she heard him strangling whatever else had wanted out. But she already had figured it out.

"You didn't. Well. I didn't either. Don't put this on me."

"You told a suspect you remembered everything. You told a _murderer_ that you remembered every second of that day. But you told me-"

She smacked him in the shoulder, furious beyond fury. "You asshole. That's what this is about? You heard something in interrogation - where I notoriously twist every damn word just to get my confession - you took _that_ as truth? As your what? Shining signal of my intentions?" His mouth gapes. She could do the strangling. "You did. You believed _that._ Instead of me. I should hate you for that. I should _hate_ you for that."

"I… believe everything you say," he rasped. "I believe you."

"We had a conversation. We talked. And what happened, Castle. You got tired of waiting. Fine. Then you're not-" _for me._ But he was everything for her. "My fault then. My… I should have known better than to fall in love with you."

—–


	4. Chapter 4

—–

"Should have… known better." His voice was dry and blank, as hollow as her insides. "Should have known better."

The cab hurtled through the morning. Hypnotic. Dull. Terrible. She felt sick; she'd drunk too much and thrown up in the street. She'd spent six hours in an airport trying to sober up with burnt coffee and espresso that no one could ever make right.

Correctly. Not that there was a way to make this right, not that coffee could do that. Just-

"You say that like…"

She turned her head slowly to see him staring down at his hands. His hands open on his lap, limp.

"You say that like it's a… burden." His shoulders loosened, slumped, his head tilting back. "It is a burden. It is. I know." With his eyes closed, he looked tired. Old.

"You don't have to wait," she said bitterly, turning her head away. "You're released."

"I didn't go anywhere," he said gravely. "I didn't _go_ anywhere." Her eyes flashed open and she glared at him, but he sighed, rubbed his hand down his face. "I got my feelings hurt." His mouth turned down. "Deeply hurt. It wasn't that I couldn't wait, I have been waiting, it's that it… I'm good at making up stories in my own head, Kate. Too good. And maybe you're just a story I told myself. A story I wanted so badly to hear."

Her stomach flipped.

His head bowed forward, a hand covering his eyes. "God, I'm tired."

She swiped her fingers under her eyes and turned her face to the window. She'd done this too, then. She'd been too… complicated. It was too much, asking for things she had no right to expect, hoping something would buoy them long enough-

His hand came down on hers. Was dragged over against his thigh. Damp palm, crushing fingers. "Aren't you tired of this?" He clutched at her hand, as if he thought she'd take it back. "Aren't you sick to death of guessing?"

She glanced at him, clueless, wiped out. "I don't know what you mean."

He grimaced and stared at her. "Exactly." His jaw worked, and he shook his head. "I made choices - poor as they were - based on bad evidence. But it was the only evidence I had, Beckett. It was all I had."

"And that's my fault?"

"No. _Stop._ We're not doing this. I'm telling you what happened to - why Vegas and London and everything else." His hand was a vise; the grip drew her eyes up to his face. Stony. Hard. "It's not an excuse. And if you regret-" His jaw worked, his eyes glittering. "If you regret our partnership, then it is your fault. Because I won't let a little thing like a mistake, like miscommunication, get in the way."

"Miscommunication," she muttered.

"I'm in love with you, Beckett."

Her jaw dropped, fingers clutching in a spasm.

"Let that be clear," he said, glaring at her. "You don't have to love me back. You just gotta tell me you don't so I know. I'm done with guessing." His eyes dropped. "It hurts too much."

—–


	5. Chapter 5

—–

"Guessing?!" Her guts knotted. "I made it clear to you. We had a _conversation_. You said you understood. You said you would _wait_."

"I _did wait."_

 _"_ And then you stopped." She was breathing hard, her insides fluttering and jittery. "You stopped waiting and now what am I supposed to say to this - this confession? Because it doesn't feel real to me, it's never felt real to me."

"Never felt _real_?" His anger had a force to it, a rage consuming. "I don't see how I can make it any more real to you, Beckett."

"Maybe don't _yell at me."_

"Hey." A voice cut through their stalemate. _"_ Maybe you both don't yell, yeah? I can hear you over the music."

Kate's cheeks burned and she looked away. The cab driver was chuckling from the front seat, turning right across traffic in a way that made her American sensibilities roil.

"I wasn't yelling at you," Castle said. His voice rough as sandpaper. "I was trying to keep you alive with me."

At that, the breath was knocked out of her lungs. Memory and flashback. She glanced quickly at him; he still held her hand in his like clutching at straws. Desperate.

"You really meant…" She swallowed quickly, the urge to be sick rising again. "Makes me panicky, Rick."

"Well, great."

"No, not you saying - not that. That day. Mem-memory," she whispered. "Makes me sick."

"Lady, you 'bout to be sick? You look knackered. Hey, mate, you stop yelling at her. I get it's all a cock-up. But she chunders in my cab and you're-"

"I'm not sick," she croaked. "I'm fine. It's fine. Too sober to throw up."

"I'll stop yelling at her."

She glanced at Castle, the sharp grief on his face as he spoke. His eyes met hers and there was no amusement in them.

None of this was funny.

"The Langham is up ahead on the left," the cabbie said, gesturing vaguely.

Kate peered past the car's frame to see what slick chrome edifice Castle had directed them to, some awful blowout night from his past, but instead-

It was everything London ought to be, grand and regal and stately, a _Castle._ She stared, feeling once more out of place, out of her league, unable to measure up.

But her hand was still trapped in his - and-

and so was her heart.

—–


	6. Chapter 6

—-

Walking through the immense lobby of the Langham Hotel London was enough to make her want to drop through the floor to the fiery heart of the earth. The marble pillars with grey veining, the cascading waterfall chandelier, the black and white mosaic tiling (oh God, it wasn't tile, of course it wasn't; she was just too poor to know what it ought to be called) - the whole effect of grandeur and regal nobility was humiliating.

She stood beside him at the wide front desk with its teak and cherry wood finishings, the leather embossed detailing, the black marble…

And tried to pretend she wasn't wearing work clothes from yesterday (two days ago?) and that she had, somewhere recently, brushed her teeth with more than a pack of gum she'd bought at an airport Starbucks (because the duty-free shop was outrageously expensive and she'd felt like she didn't deserve toothpaste and a toothbrush for her flight-of-shame home).

Castle booked them a room (one room, only a suite had been available and she hadn't summoned the energy to protest; she was going to fall asleep the second her head hit a pillow or arm of a couch anyway, and what did it matter?)

He asked for something from the concierge, a murmur of pleasantries and obsequious _of course sirs_ and then Castle was nodding towards the discreet bank of elevators towards the left side. He punched the call button - a bellhop had disappeared from their sides once he'd seen they had no luggage - and the elevator came with a slide of massive doors.

It was beautiful. It was too much. Never had she felt so hopeless.

"Fourth floor," he murmured. Turning a brass key over in his hand. "All they had with - with a suite."

"It's fine," she sighed. What did she care what floor they were on? She didn't want to be in such a gorgeous royal hotel, but it was a good reminder that Castle moved in a world she'd only been allowed glimpses of.

Even if her mother had never… she still wouldn't measure up to _this._

The elevator doors opened on the fourth floor and Kate stepped off first, turning her head to check down the hall. She saw a man in a strangely muted uniform heading towards them, his whole form looked as if… as if he'd been washed too many times.

Weird. She couldn't quite make out his face.

"Kate? We're down this way."

His voice caught her attention, and when she turned back to look, the man was gone.

"Kate?"

"I… did you see that?"

"Not funny, Kate."

"What?" she said, confused by the irritation on his face as she followed. She glanced back over her shoulder, searching for the guy who'd been _right there._ "He was just - I thought he was about to ask us something. I think he was lost."

"Kate. Seriously. I'm not in the mood for another haunted house trick of yours."

"Haunted…" She laughed, too bewildered to make sense of his statement. "Castle, what in the world are you talking about?"

He grimaced, giving her a sharp look as he turned the corner and started down another hallway. She couldn't help glancing back once more, certain she'd seen someone approaching them.

But there was no one.

Goosebumps prickled her skin; the hair stood up on the back of her neck. Chills down her spine.

"Castle," she said slowly. "Castle, what made you pick the Langham?"

He scowled and stopped in front of a door marked 447. "Just be glad I knew enough not to accept 433."

"What. Why?"

"Because Room 333 in the Langham Hotel is so severely haunted-"

" _What_?"

His shoulders hunched. "Look, Beckett. The only hotels I know of are ones on my London Supernatural Tour. So… here we are. I hope the ghosts will be kind, because this has been a shitty week."

"That was not a ghost in the hallway, Castle."

He narrowed his eyes at her and finally got the door open. It moaned as it swung inwards. "You're the one who saw it, Beckett. Not me."

—–


	7. Chapter 7

—–

"Hang on, you're not kidding about the haunted thing?" she asked, following him inside.

"Why would I be kidding?" He glared at her, flipped on the bathroom light. She caught a white flare of marble before her eyes left the narrow range of Castle's frustration to the world beyond.

"Oh. Oh my God." A sense of vast majestic light through a wall of tall and narrow windows. "Oh my God, Castle. You didn't."

"Our room's not on top of Room 333, but it's close enough that it's - you know - rather available. I have to-"

She jerked her eyes back to him in time to see him duck into the bathroom, and she waved him off, wandered towards the windows.

Oh, God, this place.

The light was insane, spilling in through nine foot windows and bathing the sitting room in gold and amber. Pale grey curtains were hung from the rounded ceiling, drawn back to allow a panoramic view. The very scenes of London, bustle and traffic, flags and prams, pigeons on statues.

She touched a hand to the cream-colored couch and smoothed her fingers over the silk throw. Silk. Cashmere pillows. Soft-pile carpet with tasteful art on the walls.

But of course it was the view.

"Beckett?"

She turned. "Ghosts," she sighed, shaking her head. "Castle, this is too much-"

"I want a good night's sleep, and this is what they had available. The bedroom is through there, but look at this place. I could sleep on the couch if need be. You want the bathroom?"

"Yeah, I… but Rick-"

"Damn it, Kate. The place is haunted. They have ghosts coming out of their ears. Every floor. It's not just for you. This is _what they had."_

"Yeah." She turned her head, made stiffly for the bathroom, pushing past him. Not for her. Not for her. She had to get that through her head.

"Kate-"

She avoided his grasp and slid inside the bathroom, shut the door after her.

Bowed forward, elbows tucked into her sides to breathe. Trying to breathe. It hurt. This gorgeous room, those windows and the light, the idea that maybe he was trying to make up for something, that he was using a cover story about a haunting to give her something beautiful…

But he wasn't.

He was furious and sad; she was indignant and grieved. It was too late; it had passed them by.

—–


	8. Chapter 8

She bowed forward under the shower and let the spray cascade down her back. It burned. The water heater was very good, and the water pressure was even better, and it was all running into her eyes and stinging.

Yet, she didn't feel clean.

She wasn't sure if she ever would. If this feeling could be scrubbed off her skin, out of her insides.

Missing her chance.

They'd missed their moment.

She knew from painful experience that you couldn't force it back. When Will had come back into her life, she'd had that fluttery feeling in her throat, and she'd mistaken it for hope, for a second chance. Instead it had only been a leftover grief and perhaps a little shame at how she was still NYPD and he was still FBI and they still couldn't close that chasm.

Rick Castle would eventually pass out of her life. Maybe not today, but 'soon' was on both their hearts. Soon. He would have to leave, and it wouldn't be anyone's fault, it would be the natural way of things.

Everyone had their season. Theirs was drawing to a close.

Beckett pushed her hair back off her face, wet and running into her ears, down her neck, heavy. She turned and tilted her head back, let it all wash away, everything.

Soap and sadness.

She turned off the water and opened the glass door, stepped out onto bare tile. She hated the cold marble under her toes, the sense of slippery danger if she moved wrong, but she'd forgotten the bath mat.

She yanked a fluffy white towel from the rack and let it fall unfolding, wrapped it around her body. She took a second towel because she could, because she would allow it to be 'for her' even though it wasn't, because she did deserve better, regardless what his accusations and her own mangled psyche tried to tell her.

She deserved to use as many damn wonderful towels as she wanted.

She dried her hair with the second obscenely large towel and then straightened up, staring herself down in the mirror. She felt scrubbed raw if not clean, and she dropped the extra towel to the floor, damp and used, despite the polite placard that asked her to re-use her towels.

Also on the floor? Her smoke-and-alcohol drenched clothes from a lifetime ago.

Shit.

She had no clean clothes.

She had no clean clothes.

Kate groaned softly and hid her eyes behind her hand, trying to summon the strength of will to put her clothes back on again.

A rap on the door made her startle, her name low and apologetic from outside. "Beckett? The concierge dropped this off for you. Can I just - or you can - open the door and take these?"

"What?" she scraped out, feeling a mess all over again.

"Beckett." The door opened and she gasped, her heart instantly in her throat, the flush of her skin and the fall of her wet hair on her shoulders making her aware in a way that was disgraceful.

"Castle," she warned.

But he wasn't coming in; he was shoving something through the crack in the door.

Jeans. A couple t-shirts. Something plaid that looked incredibly like a shirt she owned. Wool socks.

Panties.

He had his head bowed, both hands extending his offer. His eyebrows knitted together even as she ducked to be sure his eyes were closed.

Maybe she didn't want them to be closed.

She swallowed roughly and reached out for the clothing. "Thanks," she whispered. "Thank you, Rick."

His head lifted, eyes opening.

And her towel, tucked between her breasts, suddenly unraveled.

—–


	9. Chapter 9

—–

The towel slipped, but she clamped her elbows into her sides and yanked the stack of clothes towards her chest. Still, the drape exposed more flesh than was kind, and his eyes were stuck somewhere… south.

"Castle," she said, though she couldn't tell if she was chiding.

His eyes came up to meet hers, but the long way around, and not a trace of shame or embarrassment adorned his face. All the same, the time it took was the only telltale trace of his hunger, that long drag up her body.

His face was still as stone. His eyes were blank.

But-

"Were you crying?" she blurted out, rooted to the marble floor by the pinch in his features.

"No," he gruffed, turning his head, his body away. He shut the door to the bathroom, leaving her there, and she stared blindly into the mirror. A long portion of leg, thighs and pelvis, the width of her hips unartfully framed by towel.

She'd hidden the bullet wound, and by association, her breasts. Nothing else.

Beckett sighed and let it fall, everything, held her hands to her face to forget the impression she made. The clothes were a heap on top of both towels, a scatter of socks in their variegated wool, somehow cheerful.

She sank down to her haunches and plucked out the pale purple panties. Had he told the concierge - did he even know it was her favorite color?

Of course he knew, of course he'd asked, perhaps not so directed, but an offhand comment, _she's drawn to purple_ , and the expensive hotel's clever concierge had decided on these, and the faint touch of purple in the plaid shirt.

She dressed mechanically, underwear (no bra, she wore the one she'd had on), jeans and t-shirt. The plaid shirt on over, loose and unbuttoned, rolling the sleeves to her elbows because it was a little too big for her. The jeans as well, loose in the hips, and she wondered if he'd told them her size (like the dress he'd bought for her early on; he was an excellent judge, had a good eye).

She decided that yes, he had told them her size, and this was the result of almost a year's worth of hard slow recovery - bony where she should be thick, sagged where she should be curved.

She opened the bathroom door with the wool socks in her hand, slid towards the lush main sitting room. Castle was bowed forward on a couch, elbows on his knees.

"Thanks," she said again, standing awkwardly in the doorway. "All yours. If you…"

He scrubbed a hand down his face and she saw again those rough signs of age and exhaustion. Lines around his mouth rather than his eyes. Which were bloodshot now, bleary. "I'm alright," he said, voice low. "Shower… later, I guess. I don't know."

She stepped to the couch perpendicular to his, sank down. Drew a knee up to her chin to tug on a wool sock. It was warm inside, made her toes wriggle, the simple pleasure shivering down her spine as well.

"I didn't see anything," he said.

The towel had gaped open in front, she had caught only the sides. "Sure you did," she answered softly. "It's okay. Of anyone."

His eyes lifted now to her foot, her toes in the socks. Something on his face she couldn't read. She switched feet slowly, drawing up her bare one, belatedly realizing she'd bruised the top of her foot somehow, somewhere.

She wanted him to reach out. Or ask her - ask her some other question.

He'd been crying. Frustration, real grief; she didn't know, though she could understand. Even with all that, she didn't know what came next. Or how to get to where… where it wasn't like this. Tense and bitter.

Instead of putting both feet on the floor, she drew them under her and sat back against the couch. Her elbow on the arm, her chin on the heel of her hand, her shoulders slumped.

"Yeah," he said finally. "Probably won't be able to unsee it either. So. You know. Just desserts."

"I… don't know what that means," she admitted. But she fell silent when he didn't answer, and she could fill in the blanks. She was a torment, and that little peep show was enough to send him deeper into the concentric circles of hell.

Right.

Well, enough.

—–


	10. Chapter 10

—–

She had just stalked past him for the bedroom when he cleared his throat and said-

"If I asked you a question, would you answer?"

She turned. "Does this one count?"

His head came up, his eyes weary. Or perhaps, instead, wary. And that made her sad.

"Yes, I'll answer," she said, facing him now. The beautiful light spilled across the floor from the imposing windows, though he'd apparently closed one set of curtains. She didn't know what she was committing herself too, but perhaps the two of them deserved full disclosure for once.

"If you knew all this time…" She braced herself, but he trailed off and shook his head. "No, that's not my question. That's not even all that important, compared to this one."

"This one?"

"Are you…" His chest flared, broadened as he took a deep enough breath to sustain him for the answer. "Are you ever gonna want to be with me?"

She was stunned into silence.

He pushed off his knees and stood, as if needing to face it like a man. His hands hung at his sides, his face slack but his eyes roughly avoiding her, coming back, shuttered.

"Does now work?" she asked.

He blinked, his head turned away, chin pointed as if absorbing a blow, but his eyes came again to her. "What?" The intensity of that word had her taking a step back, but he strode forward, blocked for the moment by furniture, the couches and tables and chairs between them. "You answered my question with a question."

She pressed her fingertips to the ridge of one of her ribs, fighting for breath amidst the terrible jarring of her heart. "We're not - too late you think?"

Another jerky stride forward, his knee catching a side table so that he had to hastily right a swaying lamp. "That's another question."

She was very bad at this. "I'm not doing it on purpose."

"Yes, you are." He cleared the sitting room and was in front of her in seconds. Eyes burning. Mouth a harsh deep line. "You are doing it on purpose. Just answer the question."

"Yes."

His chest rose and fell. Arms flexed, fists made at his sides and releasing again. "Yes?"

"Could it be now?" she said, trying to pitch her voice above the jittery rattle of her heart. "I'm so tired of not being good enough and I just-"

She broke off, expecting - not this. Not anger. Not the stone on his face. Not the total lack of movement.

She had, actually, thought he might kiss her.

He wasn't.

—–


	11. Chapter 11

—–

"Okay," he said.

Just… okay?

She was suddenly cripplingly unsure.

But Castle nodded again, shoved his hands into the pockets of his crisp jeans. After a seven hour flight and a cab ride and… his jeans were still startlingly perfect. He shuffled backward a step. "When was the last time you had a meal?"

Her mind blanked.

He grimaced. "Poor word choice. When was the last time you ate?"

"Something at the precinct, peanut butter crackers." Maybe. Or had that been the day before? She couldn't keep track. "Too many fireballs."

His hands came out of his pockets and spread in a broad gesture, as if he was performing a magic act and trying to distract her. "That's definitely not the same as sustenance. Have you sampled any of what London has to offer?"

"I… no," she said, rocking back on her heels in confusion. A little defensiveness. She had said she hadn't. Did he not believe her?

"Well, my body is still on New York time, which is something after six in the morning. Care to join me for breakfast?"

"Oh." She glanced down at herself, the jeans and slouchy t-shirt, then back at him. "Okay. Yes." She had used the hotel's soap, but she could still smell the night clubs in her nose, the sick. She hoped he couldn't. "Um. How far are we going?"

"Just down to the first floor. There are a number of restaurants, bistros, a bakery." He held out his elbow, forearm broad and available. "Shall we?"

"Mm, sure." She found herself being guided back through the plush and elegant sitting room to the front door, his hand laid over hers in the crook of his elbow.

Surreal.

This had turned quickly, and not to any of the scenarios she had feared or fantasized. She had seen anger smoldering, the bite of bitterness, more than a few instances of bleak nothing. And now breakfast?

She didn't understand. He had asked his one question, but… She wasn't sure what question she had answered, or what her answer had meant to him, or what that meant for what happened next.

Breakfast downstairs might be the best they could do right now.

She was so tired. She just wanted to lie down in the darkness and not think.

But Rick Castle was inviting her to breakfast, and she knew enough to know she shouldn't refuse.

—–


	12. Chapter 12

—–

She stayed quiet.

Not only because she was wiped out from the night she'd had, not only because Heathrow had offered her no comfort, not only because she'd already been on one seven-hour-flight to chase after a man she was too messy to actually have whom she then puked up her guts in front of, but also-

She was bewildered.

Too much had happened, too little had been assured.

He was being gentle with her, but in the same way he would with a victim they were trying to handle. He was giving her a smile and letting her study the menu in silence, but he was leaning back in the chair and putting zero pressure on her.

She wasn't sure if she ought to be grateful or just give way to the bleak realities.

He wasn't built for long-term; she wasn't built for easy.

Where did that leave them?

(When she'd come out of the bathroom, he had been pressing his thumb and forefinger into his eye sockets to hold back his grief. She had seen the redness and the deep creases around his mouth - and the bitterness. Grief. But now-)

She was out of place. Out of her element. She wished very badly that she hadn't flown to London after Hunt, that she hadn't lost her nerve and tried to supplement her courage with so many drinks. "I-I'm sorry you had to see me like this."

"Like what."

Her nostrils flared but she had nothing in answer. She was out of her depth.

"I'm glad you called."

"I called?" Her head jerked up. A hot flush down her neck that sent her stomach rolling. "Oh God, I did. It was an accident." She closed her eyes and pressed her hand to her face, struggling for breath.

"I wouldn't have come otherwise."

She lifted her head at his tone, staring at him. Trying to discern by the smoothness of his forehead or the flat line of his lips what exactly he meant by that.

Was that a good thing?

He flattened a hand on the menu and used the other to gesture for the waiter. A man in black pants, white shirt open at the collar, a bow. Castle pointed at a menu item. "Waffles, one of those eggs that come in the cup?" A murmured _of course._ Castle's focus turned on her, pleasant, bland. "What about you?"

She dropped her gaze back to the menu that she hadn't even read, scanned quickly. Tried.

Failed.

"Uh." Shit. The words wouldn't form; her head ached. "I'll have the same. And - some fruit?" She lifted her head with a feeling in her chest like the waiter's answer meant entirely too much.

Let there be fruit.

Please.

"Of course, madame. We have a selection of fresh or we have various chilled with yoghurt-"

"Whatever is - easiest," she said, choking a little on the word. "No. Fresh. Whatever is fresh." Her hands were shaking as she gave up the menu.

"Oui, madame." He withdrew with a bow, and it felt like she'd navigated a minefield.

Castle was still entirely relaxed, an elbow on the arm of the chair, leaning to that side. His gaze was elsewhere; she wasn't sure his attention was even with her right now.

Kate glanced furtively towards the mostly empty room, trying to gauge the restaurant. French on the menu, heavy green tablecloths, candles on the bar, sparkling colorful spirits in a variety of clear bottles. Waffles. Chilled yogurt or fresh fruit. Breakfast at this time of day (actually, she was entirely turned around on what time it was and she had left her phone on the bathroom counter).

She wasn't sure what the place was supposed to be, what its identity was; she wasn't sure she was the best judge either.

Castle had not ordered coffee.

So she hadn't either.

It hurt in ways she was too damaged to crawl out of.

—–


	13. Chapter 13

Early French nectarines diced, faintly fibrous peaches imported year-round, and topped with blood orange slices, her fresh fruit was plentiful, amazing, word-stealing.

He was watching her eat, her tentative touches of fork prongs to the fleshy display. She would catch him out of the corner of her eye and see him duck his gaze, as if he didn't want her to know he was looking.

Why was he watching her eat?

She was nervous because of it; she tried to change the subject. "How… are these cooked?" She traced her finger over the top of the egg, but it was warm.

"Soft-boiled," he answered, leaning in as if prepared now to start his own breakfast. "Soft-cooked, technically. Yes."

She eyed the shell. Soft-cooked? "Means what when it comes out of there?"

"Hm. Means you eat it out of there?"

"Have you ever?"

He was watching her fingers now, the way she lightly dappled the top of the egg. She realized and withdrew her hand, her pulse picking up beats, a thickness in her throat.

"I have," he said gravely. "Been a while. Usually wind up in Americanized hotels on my book tours, so I'm rusty."

She fidgeted in her chair, but she couldn't yet go back to sucking the tangy juice from her orange slices. She wasn't sure why he'd been watching her so intently.

"Here, let me google it," he said, brightening as if he'd had a revelation. His phone slipped out of his pocket with a dexterity that, today, made her thighs shiver under the table.

He was watching her eat fruit like a man starving and she was bowled over by the grace of his hands.

Perhaps this was, after all, a more than mutual thing.

Oh.

Was he - was _that_ it? Had he just decided, yes, okay, now this? Or were they on some tenuous footing she still had no concept for, no guide posts to point the way?

He hadn't ordered coffee. That was her only real lead. She could give away nothing before she knew.

"Ah, here we are." His thumb scrolling, a quick flip, and his eyes lifted only as far as her own egg. "Well, soft-boiled, so. The small end is at the top, the big end in the cup. Take your knife-"

He paused and she realized she was meant to follow his instructions, so she plucked up her silverware, leaving damp rings on the handle from her near-anxiety.

"Hold the egg and cup in the other hand, hold it steady that is, and then lightly tap at the top until you crack the shell."

"Aren't you going to do it too?"

"I'm gonna see how yours turns out." His smile cracked across his face like the egg.

She huffed softly and something about his grin faded, but in a good way, as if softening, as if not so jagged.

"Go on," he coaxed. The voice of a father calling encouragement, instilling determination.

Somehow it helped. She was performing for him; she knew it. She just didn't quite understand why, or what she was supposed to be achieving. Still, she tapped very lightly at the skinny end of the egg and braced herself for failure.

"There you go. Oh, uh-oh, now pare it off the top. Wedge the knife blade into the crack and bring it back towards your thumb, sheering off the top as you do."

"Um."

"It says here it's supposed to kind of flip right off before the knife hits your thumb. Give it a roll."

She blew out a breath and attempted to follow his instructions-

"Oh." She had an egg.

"Ha. You did it. Wow. You made it look easy."

She lifted her gaze to his face, something of her success - however minor - blossoming like warmth inside her.

Because of him.

"Now you," she said, nodding to his egg.

He broke the connection of their eyes, head ducking once more. He laid his phone flat on the table, the screen going dark, and he took up his utensil, gripped the egg cup.

"Once more into the breach," he said bravely.

But she saw, in that moment of his showmanship, the alert flare on his screen. New message.

Even upside down she could read who it was from.

 _Jacinda_

Her hands dropped to her lap; she stared at her own plate.

It was just an egg. It wasn't the whole world.

—–


	14. Chapter 14

—–

"You're not eating much."

She forced a smile and glanced up at him. "The yolk is runny," she answered. By way of apology. "It's making my stomach turn."

"So. How drunk were you?" He tilted his head and looked her up and down, as if amused, but she saw the sliver of ice in him, felt it. "Or are you still?"

"Bit hungover," she admitted, nodding slowly. "Trying not to make any sudden movements."

A crooked smile that didn't reach his eyes. "You won't spew all over me, will ya?"

She stiffened. "No." He was trying? Or he was getting his digs in. She still didn't know how to respond to his meanness, still found him incomprehensible when he was passive aggressive. It just hurt. "I already did that anyway. In the bushes near Buckingham Palace. Or… somewhere after the Palace. And on his shoes, I think."

Castle's face went hard and he dropped his gaze to his phone. He wasn't checking it for alerts, though; he didn't even touch it. "Right. But you called _me_."

"I called you," she said softly. Maybe he was just looking for a silver lining. Maybe she was too. "I'm sorry, Rick, I'm not exactly on top of things right now. Haven't slept, food is a struggle… holding my head up is a struggle."

His brow tucked in. "Best thing for a hangover of this magnitude is a meal. And citrus, actually, so you're doing something right."

Her lips parted, but nothing came out. She was blank.

"Believe me," he said, nodding to the table as if certain of at least that. His smile was fond this time, and she didn't understand that either. "If there's one thing I know, it's the magic cure for a lady's long night."

His mother.

Oh God. No _wonder_ he came after her, no wonder the look on his face, the sense of both responsibility and resignation, how he'd forced the joviality, and the regard.

She'd relegated him to his usual role. Break down their relationship to its base elements, and what it came to was this: he had always been the one to pour some coffee and hair of the dog, always been the go-to guy to pick up the pieces.

They always walked all over him.

"Your mother moved in with you after her last husband left with all her money?"

The transition went over his face like a wave - indignation to resentment to a patched-on amusement. "My mother doesn't call it that, but yes."

"I knew that," she husked, clearing her throat to work past the knot. "I knew that and I still…"

He glanced down at the table, then back up again. "I don't see what that has to do with you, what you did."

 _What you did_. Ominous. She felt that flash-freeze her insides and she stared at him. "Calling you when I - after this."

"Is it after yet, Beckett? Cause I'd sure like to be done."

She jerked back in her seat, as if movement in retreat could somehow pull her away from those words. She nodded blindly, not looking. "Right. Yeah. Me too. Easier when the dust has settled."

She'd figure it out; she would. He had someone to get back to, some fun waiting in the wings, and she was a wearying responsibility.

This was his role; he wouldn't leave her to face the harsh cold cruel world alone. His mother had taught him too well.

She was just another in a long line of those who had broken too hard, veered off the path, lost her way - and then called him to pick up the pieces.

—–


	15. Chapter 15

—–

A touch on her elbow made her rouse, her whole body orienting to him.

"Castle?" She craned her neck and saw him standing over her, the restaurant mostly empty.

"You fell asleep a little," he said. He was hunching, his fingers at the back of her arm and lightly tugging. "Thought I'd let you until-" A shrug, his face gentle. "You ready?"

She glanced at her plate. She'd eaten a few bites of waffle, most of the fruit, though the smell of the runny egg still made her stomach flip. "Yeah. I'm tired."

"Come on, up you go." He seemed to be chuckling under his breath, though she couldn't figure out why.

If they'd just had some _coffee._

She had to use the tabletop to leverage herself up, standing on her feet with a dizzying sway. Castle caught her elbow, but released her again quickly, a brush of fingers.

She glanced at him, uncertainty weighted down by exhaustion, but the grave concern on his face only confused her.

"You okay?" he said. "Did you eat enough?" He was guiding her towards the front of the restaurant, the dark wood of the doors. "Maybe I should call up some toast for room service."

"I couldn't eat any more," she groaned, trying to sidestep out of his cautious, solicitous hand. "Too tired to eat." She felt the shift of his attention and glanced at him; he had masked his face once more, blank behind those eyes. "Did you sleep on the plane?"

"No," he said shortly, opening the door for her. "Too - upset to sleep."

She sucked in a short breath, another sidelong look. That wasn't disinterest, was it? Had she been reading this wrong, had she not understood? "You haven't slept? I don't know how you're still standing."

"Helps that I'm not hungover," he murmured, and his eyebrows slanted, curved, shot up again. Nudging her towards the elevators. Was he… was he messing with her or was he serious?

She stopped in the middle of the hallway, right before the elevator, and he narrowly missed running into her. He tripped forward, his hands and body curved protectively to stop himself from plowing her down. "Whoa, whoa, you stopped moving." A huffing breath, the warmth on her cheek he was so close. "Beckett?"

"It's Kate," she whispered, unable to help tilting into him. He grunted, clutching her elbows before something brave - or insane - overtook him and he shifted his hands up to her shoulders.

It was nearly a hug. She was half-hysterical as his five o'clock shadow scraped at her forehead. She might cry, she might laugh; she would not be able to stop.

She was desperate. She was ping-ponging from one extreme to the next and she was just too tired to figure this out.

She stepped into him, forcing the embrace, braced for the worst.

"Kate?" But as tentative as her name was, his arms went around her. Caged her against his chest.

Something so vital, the pressure as she leaned into him. She could sob.

His hand skated up her back, barely there, hovered somewhere close to her ear. "Are you okay?" His palm curved carefully to her skull. "Kinda scaring me here."

"I'm - okay," she got out. She dragged in a deeper breath (of him, rich heavy musk of skin and faded aftershave), and she made fists at his sides and pushed back, straightened up. "I'm okay now."

His hands were slow to leave her, making her shiver as his eyes searched hers. "Come on, you need sleep. In a real bed." He pushed the call button for the elevator and it opened right up for them. "You've been beating yourself up since the cab ride, and I don't know why, but that's it, Kate. No more. Let's be done, remember? Let's just put this behind us."

That's what he'd meant by them being done?

Oh God, she was so grateful she might fall apart right here in the elevator.

—–


	16. Chapter 16

—–

She staggered off the elevator, astonished at how her body kept moving even though the ascension had stopped. Castle caught her elbow, but not in time to keep her from knocking a shoulder into the wall.

"Wow. You're… really hungover."

"I was really drunk," she muttered. "And I'm really exhausted. And I really just want to-"

But Castle was suddenly gasping and darting forward, brushing past her down the hall while she stumbled. She laid her cheek to the faintly textured wallpaper, wilting against the wall. A musty scent wafted up, and she closed her eyes because she just didn't have the will power to ask. To investigate.

He was running hot and cold. Five hours ago maybe she could have called his name and discovered why, but right now-

"Did you see that?"

She opened her eyes.

Castle was halfway down the hall, back-lit by the noon sun that spilled through a window in the junction. He turned crazily, his body a jagged movement, his hair sticking up, arms spread. "Did you see that, Kate?"

"What?"

A wildness was in his eyes when he strode back for her, a wildness that had her spine straightening and her body coming off the wall to meet him. The scruff at his jaw and throat were dark shadows; she could see the bewildered exhaustion in him as well.

He stopped just before her, twisted back to look at nothing down the hall. Then he turned to her, peering past her towards the elevator. "You weren't kidding, were you?" That bewilderment made his face look young despite the haggard lines. "You weren't yanking my chain."

"When this morning have I at all been kidding? I'm too tired to be yanking anything, Castle, and oh God, please do not make a joke out of that, I just don't have it in me."

His lips had quirked, and then flattened, and now zipped up again, his grin pressing too deep for her. She didn't bother replaying her words to find out where she'd gone wrong, she just angled past him to head for the room.

Was it seventy-something or something-seven?

"Kate?"

"What, Castle."

"I saw a ghost."

She was already at the junction, with all that too-bright light. Who'd have thought spring in London would have so much sunshine? She longed for a spring shower. An entire afternoon of darkness, grey clouds and muted traffic and the swish of tires through rain.

"I'm not kidding. I saw a ghost. I think. I mean, this guy just disappeared. He looked like he was walking toward us and then he was gone."

"Sure, Castle."

She slogged towards their room, listening to the hurried sounds of him chasing after, taking out the key from his pants' pocket, the little caught breath of his wonderment.

"Maybe, we should prowl this floor to look for him. He could reappear - ooh, or, or we could camp out in the hall! Drag out the bed covers and make a nest and wait for the ghost. Maybe he'll talk to us. Maybe _it_ will talk to us? I never thought to ask, but it's possible these spirits have no body, have taken on corporeal form as a way to trick us into believing they're human, but they're actually demonic-"

"Castle." She glanced back at him. "Key. I'm falling asleep on my feet." The difference between before breakfast and now after, his nonstop theorizing, the glow on his face, the energy…. A ghost in the hotel and he hadn't gone looking? She hurt just thinking of him so broken down; this was better. "I'll make a nest with you in the hall - if you promise to let me sleep until the ghost shows up real and in the flesh."

"In the flesh?" He grinned and wriggled his eyebrows, but he was nudging forward to put the key in the lock. "Isn't that an oxymoron?"

Close. Intimate. Her eyes crossed he was so near.

So she closed them. He smelled sweet. Powdered sugar and a long flight. She had been pressed against him for a moment downstairs; there were the extra wrinkles in his shirt where she'd made fists to hang on.

"No, Kate. I won't make you sleep out in the hall," he whispered. "Investigation can wait."

—–


	17. Chapter 17

—–

She attempted to shuck the plaid shirt on her way to the couch, but the material got tangled around her arms. She felt the muscles in her shoulders cramp and contort with the effort of shedding the layer. A sharp pop in her neck lanced pain up into her skull and she staggered.

"Whoa. Hang on." Castle's fingers caught her. She hissed and closed her eyes, tilted her head to work out the wicked tension. He guided her to the couch, brought her down. "What's wrong?"

"Nothing, just-" She reached back and dug her fingers into her shoulder, just under the shoulder blade, still tangled in the damn shirt. "Ah, sat for hours in the airport all cramped in that chair and now…"

"Here, let me." His hand landed on her shoulder like a paw, heavy and hard, and she rocked towards him, off-balanced. His fingers clamped front and back of her shoulder in a vise and she withered, moaning with the pain.

"Ow," she gasped. "That's - ah-"

"You're knotted up," he said into her grunting. "All through here." His other hand came up and he ran a finger under the collar of her plaid shirt, somewhere around the middle of her back. "What were you trying to do here?"

"Just, get it off," she sighed, wincing as he dug in. His thumb was impressively brutal, the pressure excruciating. And then the muscle spasmed and went limp, and she did as well, rocking towards him.

Castle's fingers released, her shoulder numb and tingling. He skimmed his palm down her arm, under the sleeve of her shirt, and loosened it carefully from her wrist.

She was arrested by the feel of his palm against her bare skin. The coast of his individual fingers, wide and thick, where she could feel each ridge of bone and knuckle.

She had never felt so much before.

His breath against her neck was a sudden warm vulnerability, and she closed her eyes.

If he… she would. She would go with it even though she was a mess, she was rubble without hope of reconstruction right now. She would. If he did.

"Lift up a little," he said, words rich and low.

She shifted and he got the other arm free, drew the shirt down and away from her. She shivered in only her t-shirt, her shoulder still twinging, but instead of his hands coming back to her, she felt distance at her back.

She turned just in time to see him rise, folding the plaid shirt and placing it on the glass and mirrored coffee table.

Her heart dropped.

She pulled her legs up onto the couch, toeing off her shoes as she huddled into the cushions. She closed her eyes so she wouldn't see him leave the room, so she wouldn't have to keep watching his careful distance.

She'd done that to him anyway. She had asked for it. If she didn't, he wouldn't. He wouldn't. He was the man who came to London to scour the city for her, but more than release tension in her shoulders, he wouldn't touch her.

She was glad of it. She was. There'd been a breathless, butterflies-tickling-her-skin moment as his hands had skimmed along her arms, but she'd let her head fill with clouds. She had been willing to break her silent promises to herself - to him - in the heat of the moment. And she knew better.

She knew better than to begin something she wasn't equipped to sustain. And she wanted, so badly, to sustain it.

Him.

"Kate?" A whisper across her lips.

She opened her eyes.

He was squatting down before her, hands between his knees, concern across his face. "What are you doing, Kate?"

 _Trying not to cry._ "Gonna sleep," she whispered back. She ached to reach out, caress the jumping twitch of his eyebrow. Her exhaustion, the hangover, all conspiring to make her do something stupid. "I'm so tired."

"Not on the couch," he murmured. His arms flexed, he lifted a hand. His hands were so wide, his wrists thick, his arms powerful.

His palm and fingers against her cheek.

Her body released its breath.

"Not on the couch. Come on, Kate. Go to bed."

His fingers threaded in her still-damp hair.

He leaned in.

—–


	18. Chapter 18

—–

She closed her eyes at the last second, waiting for the warmth of him to meet her, but instead, the world fell out from below.

"Whoa, what-"

"Come on," he grunted. He was wrestling her off the couch, an arm hooked under her shoulder, a harsher grip at the back of her knee. "I asked for two queen-sized beds and they asked me if I was making a joke."

"What?" She felt her knee dip as she twisted off the couch. "Because of the Queen?"

"They don't have queen-sized beds in the UK apparently. So I got king instead. Two of them-"

"Two beds," she muttered, slowly-dawned understanding. "Oh, the suite has two beds."

"One room, yes, but there are two beds, Kate. Come on. You're kind of unmanageable, you know that?"

She staggered to her feet and drew a crooked line towards the open door of the bedroom, horrified by how done-in she was. "You'd think they'd want queen-sized beds here," she mumbled. Her head was beginning to pulse in time to her heartbeat, a sharp pain at her left temple. "God save the Queen."

Castle chuckled behind her, the knuckles of his fist at the small of her back, endlessly prodding. "They had kings first, I suppose."

The room was shrouded in darkness. Wide and high-ceilinged, the same narrow windows with heavy brocade curtains drawn against the day. No light leaked through, the furniture muted and soft smudges.

Two vast beds, sumptuous linens, a bounty of pillows in navy and white and ice blue. Fit for a palace. Castle was prodding her from behind, a burr in his chest for her to get moving, the sound falling into the plush carpet.

"Why do Americans name things after monarchs we don't have?" she sighed, sinking down onto the nearest mattress. She felt suddenly like crying, the exhaustion wrapped around her like a heavy cape. "Queens and Kings. We all want to believe we deserve royal treatment."

Castle knelt before her. "Some do," he murmured, his fingers wrapping around her ankles. He lifted her legs onto the bed as he stood, hands trailing up her calves. She stared at him, arrested by the heat of his palm, the reassurance of his constant touch.

He leaned in over her, braced a hand near her hip that didn't even dip the mattress. He was dragging the covers down, out from under her, his eyes avoiding hers.

She shifted, lifted her hips, scooted back. He drew the covers out and then up, settling them at her shoulder. A squeeze, a murmur _there you go_ as he fussed over her. The weight of his hand curving to meet her ribs, his body a dark shadow blocking out what little ambient light came spilling through the open door.

He was tucking her into bed like a child. She supposed she deserved that.

No, she didn't deserve even that. But here he was, in London, whispering _sleep well_ as he backed away.

Her eyes were falling shut.

But first.

"Find your ghost, Castle." Her fingers opened as if seeking him, but her body too heavy to move. "Least do one thing for you."

He was looming over her before she realized he was so close, his bulk a presence and a warmth that made her feel so heavy she could cry.

"I am doing this for me."

His kiss came to her temple even as she was crashing towards sleep.

—–


	19. Chapter 19

—–

She woke.

The muted darkness, the grey of light bleeding through curtains. A heaviness in her body that kept her down.

She was overly warm, sweat prickling her scalp, the hollow of her throat, the back of her neck. Her knees. Even as she realized she was overheated under the bed covers, she felt the sweat break out, her skin burning, discomfort hitting its point of no return.

She threw off the covers and lay panting, skin sticking to the damp spot before she could move.

Kate put a foot out of bed and sought the plush carpeting beyond, managed to slide out and stand up with minimal stagger. Her head still throbbed mercilessly, a headache she'd had since the taxi ride back, and she padded silently towards a door.

Bathroom.

No, closet.

Right, out through the sitting room. She tried two more doors in the darkness before she found it, and she slipped inside and leaned back, only the night light glowing.

She pushed herself off the door, avoiding her reflection, and she used the bathroom. It took a while to relax, or maybe to wake up enough to go, and she felt stupid, her body felt stupid, as if she was still struggling for cognition. She washed her hands and the cool water over her fingers was too inviting.

Kate stuck her head under the faucet and lapped at the water like a dog, curling her tongue for more, drinking down the water from the tap. She barely tasted it, only the cool mineral relief of her raging dehydration.

She hadn't realized.

She leaned back, dizzy, faintly sick with the glut of water. She pressed the back of her hand to her mouth and turned away, shutting off the water.

The door knob was cold against her wet fingers. The room beyond was painted in greys as the curtains did their best to black out the sun. She went back through silently.

Castle was asleep in the next bed, closest to the windows, on his back with a hand on his chest. His face was blurred by the strange nonlight, and she found herself stepping closer.

Kneeling beside the bed.

She didn't touch. She wouldn't let herself violate the sanctity of whatever they'd created these last few hours over breakfast. She didn't touch, she only breathed. Quietly. Without hope, but without despair either.

She didn't know. It was one thing to have a recurring nightmare of blood in her throat and pain like cold fire and his confession more like grief. It was another to have the man say it to her fait accompli, as if there was no going back, as if it was a done deal, a heavy burden, a weight he could not bear.

(How his anger had aggressively assaulted her from the moment he had strode through Heathrow for a cab, how he had tilted his head back against the seat in frustration, how he had sat on the couch and rubbed his eyes so viciously that she had been sure he'd been crying. Was that love?)

And yet, this was a third thing. To be helped, to be forgiven, to be cajoled into eating enough, to be guided to a bed unmolested, to be left alone, to be waited upon.

He had waited. Perhaps, for a time, he had despaired, only because he'd gotten bad information, because, like herself, a confession during blood and pain seemed hollow and insubstantial, seemed a hallucination to pull them through rough waters ahead.

 _Maybe you're just a story I told myself. One I wanted so badly to hear._

She had too. Wanted that story so badly she couldn't trust its authenticity any longer. And the more time went on, the less he believed, while she had assumed - she had been so focused on her own brokenness, the ways she didn't measure up, that she hadn't once thought he would falter.

She stared at his profile, the fringe of light lashes, the harsh angle of his nose. She had never noticed that before, how severe his nose and forehead, how strangely his face looked when she broke it down to its individual parts.

Eyebrows. God. Eyebrows and even his cheekbones, which jutted up from the slack of his resting face. He had never looked _soft_ to her, but she had forgotten the _rugged_ part of handsome.

Suddenly a breath. The rise of his chest, fingers tightening, and his head turned.

He looked right at her. She pressed her arms against her sides and stared back.

"What's wrong?" he said. Words like gravel through his throat. "Kate."

She shook her head, trying to say _no, nothing wrong, no_. But her own throat was closed.

His hand came off his chest and then out, his arm reaching across the mattress until he snagged her by the shoulder.

Tugged.

She resisted only because she didn't know. Like him, she kept telling herself the story she wanted to hear-

"Come on," he rumbled. The dark burr of his voice made her hurt. "Up. In bed. Come on."

She unfolded from the floor and allowed his grip to reel her in.

And then she was crawling into bed with him.

—–


	20. Chapter 20

She wasn't asleep. She was on her side with her shoulders curled in as if for protection, guarding her already wounded heart.

He wasn't asleep either. He had rolled onto his side to watch her, apparently, or to make sure she couldn't escape, or something else less sinister (but it was hard to come up with a good reason for how he studied her, and harder still to put out of her mind the impression of a no-longer-sleeping giant).

Their eyes couldn't quite meet in the grey dim darkness. Even though she tried to read his expression. There was a foot of space between them, except not. Because their knees were touching. Her leg pulled up to brace herself, and his too, and now she let her calf relax and their shins were touching.

And now their feet. Her foot flexed so she could touch her toes to the top of his foot. Their feet were touching, and he was watching her and now his toes stroked her arch and her heart was pounding so hard.

"How is it…" he started, softly. His voice in the darkness was silk over steel and it made her skin feel tight. "That you're so tall?"

Her lips spread in a grin she couldn't contain and now she saw his as well, smirking or genuine, didn't matter. He was smiling at her and referencing a common history and that had to be a good sign.

"Better to feel you up with my toes?" she offered.

He chuckled, the sound of him doing terrible things to her body. Terrible. Oh God, she was going to forget what had woken her sick, forget why she'd been so afraid, forget all the things that needed to be said and put into the light - all because he was smiling and amused.

"I'm sorry," she whispered. It came out too loud in the darkness and they both winced. She pressed her foot onto the top of his and her toes dug at his ankle. As if to keep him there. Where would he go? This was his bed.

"Why are you sorry?" A grim look across the pillows. No way to deflect, no way to dodge, no out. "Or, I should say, what are you sorry for?"

"For not having the guts to be clear."

"Ah."

She apparently wasn't forgiven. Or she hadn't been sorry for the right things. "I'm still not being very clear, am I?"

"Well, I'd like to think crawling into bed with me and caressing my foot is clear. But the problem is - with you, Kate, it's not."

Her throat bobbed and she made a movement towards nodding but it was impossible like this. He was still studying her like a poisonous thing he'd trapped and now couldn't get rid of without hurting himself.

"I didn't say that to stop you from apologizing," he murmured.

"Does that mean I have more to ask forgiveness for?"

He sighed. "I just meant, don't stop talking. I… wish you wouldn't stop talking."

"You mean I owe you an explanation."

His face was still. And grave. And she knew she'd gotten that wrong too.

How heavy it all felt, how impossible. "I'm not going to do this right, and I know that, and so I just - wanted to keep this for as along as I could, keep it - keep it where the hope is, where there's still a dream that we could - but I'm wasting your time with it, I'm wasting your life when you should just-"

"Don't tell me what to do. That's the last thing-" He drew a hand up and covered his eyes, scrubbed down his face. "Frustrating. So damn frustrating. That's the last thing I want - to quit now. It really will have been wasted time if I quit after all _this."_

"So you're stuck now-"

"Damn, you're insistent upon one narrative, aren't you? One narrow-minded perspective. You've got blinders on, Kate, you realize, you're the unreliable narrator."

"I don't know what that means."

He suddenly rolled into her, right against her, his forearm pressed into hers and his fingers curling around her hand. Crushing her. "It means you don't listen to me. You don't hear what I say." His chest rose and fell, his voice filled the room. "My actions haven't been sterling. I lost faith in myself and my own narrative, your motivations became suspect, thought I'd invented your side of things, but-"

"You didn't," she whispered.

He arrested. His fingers like a throbbing pulse around hers. "I… thank you. I needed to hear that."

"I'm sorry you needed to hear it," she sighed. Her throat closed up, her eyes slid shut. She'd taken the wrong turn at every-

"Kate, I'm still waiting. I will wait. This has never been a waste of time. Just, on occasion, to tide me over, I've needed you to confirm it's not all smoke and mirrors."

Her eyes flared open, a chasm of hopelessness gaping inside her.

"And you did," he whispered. His fingers feathered over her knuckles to her wrist. "You have been. This latest one just didn't come in time to save us from getting a little damaged."

"Damaged," she choked.

"Not too bad," he promised. "Not too bad. Just. Expensive, Beckett, gotta keep that in mind for later."

She laughed, surprised she could at all laugh with how brittle everything felt. He was making jokes. He was looking for ghosts and making jokes and he'd said the damage wasn't too bad.

And he'd pulled her into bed with him. There was that too.

Oh God, she was in bed with him.

—–


	21. Chapter 21

"You're panicking."

"No," she croaked.

"You are. I know what it looks like - your hands are trembling."

"No."

"It's okay if you are, but I wish you wouldn't." He nudged in closer and if she hadn't been panicking before, she definitely was now. His fingers around hers, trapping her. "Is it that you just realized-"

"No, stop," she choked out.

He froze. Wide-eyed.

"Not _that_ ," she moaned. Buried her face in her hand - which was his hand too - felt his fingers curling at her forehead, in her hair. "I don't mean - I just mean stop talking so much, God, I can't."

He was silent.

"I don't mean that either," she whispered, lifting her head. "My therapist says I shut down-"

"Your therapist?" His voice pitched up and broke.

She nodded; his fingers were still threaded through her hair and the movement brought a strand across her lips.

Which he carefully moved away. "Your therapist. I didn't know you were… still going."

"Yeah." She blinked in the darkness as his fingers stroked along her cheek. Her hair was fine, there were no stray strands; he was just caressing her. "Yeah, I'm working on things."

His eyes traveled over her mouth. Slowly back to her eyes. "That wall?"

She nodded and felt his fingers brushing her cheek and now down to her neck. Her heart was thundering and he knew it; his fingers at her pulse told on her.

"Are you still freaking out?"

"Yes."

"I won't-"

"You can."

"I won't." His hand was light on her neck. "Not when neither of us have really slept and you're… maybe not as hungover as you were. But still. No. I won't."

She let out a breath, trying to slow her heart rate. Slow this down. Everything, her reaction, the night, his eyes on her. She didn't want to panic when it was so….

Beautiful. Easy. None of this hellacious week had been easy or beautiful and now in the muffled room with the curtains drawn against the world, she could say that, she could see it. It was right before her.

"Should have talked a long time ago," she offered.

"Maybe." His thumb brushed now at her throat and she swallowed. His eyes were watching the pulse in her neck, and now drifting.

Drifting across her body.

"Rick."

His eyes came back to hers, but slowly, with purpose. She was in his bed. She had crawled into his bed and he wasn't taking full advantage, but some. Some advantage.

She could too.

—–


	22. Chapter 22

—–

"Can I?"

He looked at her blankly. "Can you what?"

"Take advantage. I'm not that hungover," she murmured, squirming her shoulders to get just a little bit closer. He looked wary. For the first time in a long time, she had no confidence at all in the reception she'd get. She just didn't know.

"Can I?" she repeated.

The judgment on his face was stark. "What exactly did you have in mind?"

She touched her toes to his ankle. "My feet are total sluts."

He laughed. It was loud and surprised and it did something to the tension, popped it so that his fingers at her throat relaxed. She darted her hand to his sternum and pressed against him, tucking her fingers in the collar of his shirt.

"I supposed your feet will have their way with me."

She grinned back, squirming just a little closer-

"Alright, you're not subtle, Kate. Come here." Before she knew it, he had hooked his arm around her shoulder and had braced her spine as he drew her into him.

Into the middle of the bed. Knees bumping, elbows. Thighs. Heat took up residence in her pelvis, bloomed across her hips and up her ribs to her heart.

"Hi," she whispered. Her voice cracked.

His fingers played with her hair at her nape, his forearm against her back. "Are you afraid of me?"

"No. Me."

He scowled. "I can see why."

Her jaw dropped, her head jerked back.

"No, I meant - it makes more sense that way." His fingers dug into the back of her skull. "I'm sorry, that was thoughtless. I only - it's just that I've been trying to understand for the last… and now you're making jokes and trying to get closer and I don't want to wake up tomorrow and find out I was telling myself another story."

"You're not," she said. Her fingers unfurled under the v-neck of his t-shirt collar, stroked lightly along his neck. "You're not and I'm trying to be sure I'm not either. Telling myself stories."

"Because of those walls," he said grimly. His eyes drifted from hers.

"I… yes. Because of those walls."

His hand flattened at her shoulder, slowly withdrew. He sighed and turned onto his back, stared up at the ceiling. "I don't… want to wake up to not being able to…" He shook his head against the pillow and dropped his arm over his eyes. "I just don't think we can do this."

Kate retreated, pulling her arms into her chest as she stared at him.

"You understand," he husked. "We can't do - any of this if it's just gonna be smoke in the morning."

Smoke.

"I can't anyway," he sighed. "Maybe you can. But I can't."

Castle turned, rolling onto his other side, putting his back to her.

"Go to sleep, Kate."

Go to _sleep_?

—–


	23. Chapter 23

—–

There was no way she would fall asleep after… after that.

Wounded at every word. She should have never-

No. She should have never. Period. End of story. Any of the things she'd done, she shouldn't have. She knew better.

But it was too late. It had been too late that summer he had left for the Hamptons with Gina on his arm; it had been too late.

She hadn't recovered, even though she'd told herself she had.

Kate turned her face into the pillow to keep from crying. Breathed slowly. It wasn't that this was the _end_. It was, as she had asked for, a pause. A waiting period. Neither of them ought to pick up such a deadly weapon without stopping to assess their mental states, their suitability, their criminal record.

She failed most of those tests. Her mental state was a mess. Her suitability? Just _look_ at this place; his thoughtless fix to the problem of accommodations was one of the most expensive hotels in London. After that flight, hers would have been - did they have Motel 6 here?

She was striking out swinging on mental state and suitability, but he completed the hat trick with criminal record. His past? Littered with one-night stands, didn't-know-her-names, and police horses naked.

Those were all the reasons she'd been telling herself for years now. Since taking Gina to the Hamptons. Since before.

All the same reasons. All the same circular logic, round and round in her head.

And it all led to the same result.

She was desperately in love with him.

Track record aside. Her damage aside. His emotional immaturity and self-absorbed cheerfulness aside.

She was pathetically, gracelessly in love with him. Ugly and careful as she was about it, messy and halting and weak.

And silent.

She always got closed-mouthed when her world was on the line.

Kate couldn't sleep in this bed with him turned away from her. She couldn't.

"Castle," she called. Her voice was airy, breaking. "Castle, I need you to turn around."

She saw his shoulder hunch.

" _Please_. Turn around."

For a moment, when his hand clenched on his pillow and his other fisted in the sheet, she thought he was going to leave the bed.

But he didn't.

He rolled to his back and stared up at the ceiling. His chest rose and fell as if in a great effort of breathing. He wouldn't look at her, and she once more found herself without the right words.

Of course, he had them. He closed his eyes, and his voice was raw in the darkness. "Kate. Don't do something you'll regret. I couldn't - live with myself if you regretted me."

—–


	24. Chapter 24

_He closed his eyes, and his voice was raw in the darkness. "Kate. Don't do something you'll regret. I couldn't - live with myself if you regretted me."_

—–

"Regret you?" She propped up on an elbow and shifted into him, feeling dangerous. "Never."

His startled face appeared, his arm coming down. She narrowed her eyes and _moved,_ and his hands reflexively clutched at her hips as she slid over him.

He breathed a curse.

She straddled his hips, bracing her hands on his chest, looming over him. He groaned, eyes slamming shut, nostrils flaring.

"Never," she repeated. Insufferable asshole. "You don't seem to be listening." Her heart was beating too fast. Her body was on fire, boiling. "You don't seem to know what this is about."

"It's about waiting," he answered, plaintive, fists at her hips so he wasn't technically holding her.

But she had a spine of steel, and she was done.

"Maybe it was," she said. "You trying to be a gentleman, hold yourself back, because you think I'm not ready." She leaned in over him, pressing her chest to his, feeling everything. "But clearly that isn't working for either of us."

"Hasn't been working for a while," he shot back. His lips twisted. He was truly furious with her, and it was coming back up again. "For me. But you-" He shook his head.

"Well, then stop. Stop."

The sudden drop in his features, the swift and terrible blankness in his eyes - it made her stomach turn over.

How easily he removed himself from her.

And then she understood. Then it was suddenly clear, like a damn bat signal in the sky. She finally got it.

"No. Don't you dare." She pushed in hard, snarling in his face. "Every damn stupid thing we've said to each other today has been misconstrued. What we think the other one is doing, saying. What we think we know. You don't know shit, Castle. Waiting? No. You aren't listening."

He gritted his teeth but his eyes flared open; she saw it at war on his face, a lust that crippled, indignation that swamped him. "You said you weren't ready. _You_. You wanted this on your terms and I am just trying to play by your rules, Kate."

"Then new rules," she snapped.

And then she rocked her hips.

He growled and pinned her body to his with a strength she hadn't seen coming, clamped her hips down against his own. It did nothing to alleviate the hot, sharp sparks between them, nothing to tamp down the pure sex that had _always_ flared with their tempers.

And now she was dizzy with it. Unable to find her place again.

His eyes glittered in the darkness. "You don't _get_ to change the rules. Damn it, Kate. I've been-" She felt some of his anger leak out of him, his hands gentled, his body soft. "Just don't. Don't do it to us. It's a bad idea. You're seeing a therapist."

She shoved on his shoulders for that, succeeded only in riding his body a little more intimately than she'd meant to. He groaned, and sweat broke out at the backs of her knees, eroticism thrumming.

"I'm seeing a therapist, yes, and that's one of the reasons I don't go broadcasting the news. People see you differently if you admit to needing help. So what if everyone else can figure it out? How to _want_ so much without killing themselves. I can't. I don't know how to do anything in half measures, I-"

Castle sat up.

She nearly fell right off him, but at the last second, his arms caught her, braced and bumping her close.

Their noses brushed. "Who said anything about half measures," he husked. "I don't want half of you."

"I don't want to kill myself," she admitted, a thundering in her head that might actually kill her anyway. "Or hurt you. Most - most especially you."

"You wouldn't. Won't. Are you saying…" He trailed off and his eyes roamed over her face and then down. Down. His gaze seemed to stall out at her breasts, and she felt a terrible flush of victory for no damn good reason, and then he jerked his eyes back up to hers. "Whatever else you're saying, what I'm hearing is _let's stop talking_."

"Well, that, yes, I guess-"

He shut her up with his mouth.

Immediately, it was dirty and vicious. She moaned, clamped her knees at his hips, surged into it. She felt his brutal grip at the back of her neck, felt their bodies pressing inward, closer.

And his kiss. Her kiss. His tongue. Their fight of mouths without the words.

Her arms tightened around his neck and their teeth clashed.

Castle grunted and jerked backwards, tearing her off him, him off her, with the fist he had of her hair. It barely held her away. "Beckett." Her name was ragged on his tongue, a tongue she could still taste, vividly. His eyes tracked all over her, came back to her mouth; he seemed unable to speak.

"Castle, I'm in love with you. You already know that. But more - more is - the _point_ is - I want to climb inside you and never leave, want - I want to do things to you and have you look like that, like you always want to touch me and just - oh God, why are you _laughing_?"

He was though. He shook his head but tears glittered in his eyes and laughter snorted in his nose. "No, no, go on, sorry." But he was _guffawing._

"You _suck_ , Rick Castle."

He only laughed harder.

—–


	25. Chapter 25

—–

She was halfway out of the bed when he snagged her by the shirt and then manhandled her back in. "Kate," he said, still laughing, breathless. He wrestled her halfway into his lap once more before she managed to hook her calf at the side of the mattress and hold herself off. "Kate, no, come on."

"You're laughing at me."

"No. I'm not. I'm - okay, I'm laughing - but that's because you said, you said that the _most_ important thing was - oh God, Kate, stop trying to get away. You're right. We misunderstand, mistake each other. Just - sit, woman. Let me explain."

She hadn't really been struggling that hard, but she stopped now. All of the fight went out of her; she was just so damn tired of not getting the point. Of missing it.

"Hey," he said quietly. His hand opened, releasing her. But not. An offering instead. "Kate?"

She put her hand in his and he squeezed, a sharp breath in his chest that she realized meant he was less sure than his laughter had made her think.

"Okay," he said. A nod. "You were brave, and you spoke up, when I really expected to keep going like this for… ever. For longer than I could hope to wait."

"What?" She lifted her head and stared at him, her frustration bleeding into desperation. "Longer than you could wait?"

He didn't back down; his eyes were steady. "I was afraid, yes." His fingers curled around hers, stroked at her knuckles. "I know me. I don't have the best track record with relationships, let alone… whatever this is, Kate."

"Not… a relationship you mean," she said, the answer sticking in her throat.

"It's something though."

She nodded, swallowing hard, staring down at their hands. Their _hands_. When she'd sat up and straddled his _body_ and he'd… laughed.

"Kate. Stop. Look at me."

She blew out a breath and lifted her head. His hand caught her cheek and held her there, and she closed her eyes, wanting to curl in on herself, wanting to curl into him.

"Come here," he husked. He didn't even wait for assent, he simply caught the back of her neck and pulled her against him.

She crashed, pressing her face to his neck to stop the threat of tears. She _had_ been brave, she had tried, but they were still… this.

"I laughed because to _me_ the most important part? You kinda blew right by it. Twice now. Makes me think I must be hearing things. Especially when you say you want me? You want to crawl inside me, I think the words were-"

She smacked his arm for that, but a ripple of laughter went through her. "What are you talking about. That is the most important part. It means - it means all this stupid talking and messing things up doesn't-"

"It's not," he said. His palm curved to the back of her head, warm and heavy. Drugging. "It's not the most important. Because, damn Kate-" He was growling, and it made her shiver. "-I've wanted to crawl inside you since I laid eyes on you. Since you arrested me. Since you walked away from that first case-"

"Yeah?" she said, lifting her head. She'd known that. She did know that. But-

"Wanting is nothing," he said. "Well. Okay, it's a lot. It's driven me to distraction, that's for sure. But the other part? That's what we can make something out of. Something more."

"Oh." The other- "Oh!"

"Yeah. Oh."

She grinned, sliding her arms around his neck, and she shifted into his lap, all-in this time. His cheeks were red in the darkness; she could feel the heat at his ears where her arms pressed against him. Her courage had returned, flushing through her with that same heat.

Kate leaned in and softly touched her lips to the line of his jaw. "The part where I said I'm in love with you? Was that it?"

He shivered, his arms tightening around her reflexively. "Yeah, that - that part." He still had a hand at her nape, the back of her skull, as if to direct her.

She kissed the rough scratch of bristles on his throat. "Castle."

"I'm in love with you, Kate," he blurted out. "Oh God, that's not smooth or romantic at all, but I-"

"Shut up, Rick." And now it was her turn to silence him with her mouth.

—–


	26. Chapter 26

rather close to M rated

—–

His mouth against hers. The rough desperation of his hands. The groan in his chest that rumbled between them, the vibrations she felt from his noises.

Awfully talkative, even when he wasn't talking.

She grinned around his bottom lip, her teeth plucking. He growled and caught her hips, wrapped his arms around her. Crushed her down against him.

She couldn't breathe. Who needed it? She couldn't move much other than to suck on his bottom lip until he went a little weak, moaning, his strength failing him. She slithered down, out of his arms, shoving her hands into the waistband of his boxers as she went.

"Ah, hell," he husked. His fingers tangled in her hair, a swipe at her ear, a fist near her head. Like he was trying to catch her and failing miserably.

She scraped his hips in her haste, nails scoring the flare of his flanks. The material tangled at his thighs, stuck, and in the darkness she couldn't see damn near enough. Kate grunted in frustration and shifted up again, rising over him in the bed.

"Take these off," she demanded, fingers hooked in the twisted material.

He stared up at her for a heartbeat. She felt that pulse in her body, the strange tension of waiting, of hesitation, and she didn't understand.

Was he saying no?

But before she could falter, Castle surged up to meet her, another brutal kiss. She was stunned by the aggression in his mouth and hands, by the assault of rough and ready.

He caught her leg and tugged, drove her back to the mattress. She gasped, rattled, winding around his body to get closer. She dragged at his shirt, palms to the heat of his back, the flexing of muscle and sinew; she couldn't get it over his head. He wouldn't let up.

Burning mouth down her throat, buried between her breasts. She moaned and clutched the back of his neck, gripping tightly, but he didn't release, his teeth tearing at the scar.

She whimpered. His head came up, eyes feral in the grey light of the day they had shut out. "Hurt you?" he husked.

She shook her head and arched her back, got her hands under her to fling off her shirt. He helped, eagerly helped, tossed the t-shirt somewhere past her head.

"No bra," he said, a glittering gaze down her body. He was half raised over her, propped on an elbow and hip, staring. His free hand came to cover her sternum, a hesitation between her breasts before benediction over the scar. "I do that? Or is it always so angry."

She glanced down, though she couldn't see much other than his head in her way as he laid a soft kiss over her heart. Her body rippled with astonishing emotion, the rolling wave of feeling, and she couldn't help clutching at his ear, guiding him up.

"Must be you," she whispered. Against his lips where he was already sipping a kiss from her mouth. Another. Another. His touch gentler, but deeper. Harder. "But you didn't hurt me. It doesn't hurt when you touch me."

The noises he made. The growls and grunts and the half-spoken calls, the constant touching, nudging, using his mouth in ways that went beyond mere kisses.

His mouth feathered back to her ear, a hand caressing her ribs, her side, the scar where the surgeon had put in his hand.

"I feel like all we've said to each other is _you hurt my feelings_ and _you hurt mine too_." A breath against her ear that made her shiver. He lifted his head and his face was moving, expressive, intense. "And that isn't helpful, that doesn't propel us forward past this. I want to be past it, don't you?"

"When you say 'past this' - what's the 'this'? Because I have this terrible sinking sensation in my guts that you mean… you mean me. You want to get past me."

His eyes narrowed. "Wouldn't be pressing my hips into you if I wanted past you." His head tilted, lips twitched. "Well. There's one way I want past you, kinda, know what I mean?"

A choked noise in her throat, laughter that came out. This was going to be their sex life, wasn't it? He'd make lewd stupid jokes in the middle of things and she'd fall in love with him all over again.

"I want to get past this too. Both ways you mean." She nudged her hips up. "But you still have those boxers on."

He grinned, dipped his head - and his hips - getting closer. "Let me say one more thing before."

She groaned.

He laughed back and gave her a placating kiss, all too brief. "Don't let me hurt your feelings without saying something. And I - when you do the same, I'll tell you. Only way to stop this vicious cycle."

She huffed, tightening her arm around his neck. "Or, you know, we could just have _sex_."

He blinked. "Alright. Point for you." And then his hand pushed down her panties and cupped her.

—–


	27. Chapter 27

M rated

—–

She'd been wrong.

There were no more jokes.

There was only a lot of - a lot of power. Intensity.

She broke first, completely, so that she had to turn her head and press a cheek to the cool spot on the sheets, soak the tears that had spilled. If he noticed, he didn't comment, though she really didn't think he could possibly have noticed-

not with where he'd placed all of his attention.

He nuzzled between her legs and she shivered, blinking hard, clutching him even harder. He shifted, crawling up her body with lips caressing, skin rubbing. She released her grip on his neck, hand falling to the mattress, washed out and somehow so alive.

He curved over her. From above, the heat of his body, the way his hips dug in a unsubtle way. Perfect, painful, everything.

She turned to face him, even though he'd see the wetness in her eyes, the tremor of her lips.

He stared down at her.

His fingers caught in her hair and pushed it back, clumsily with the awkward way he was hunched over her. Naked skin to naked skin. He dropped a kiss to the corner of her mouth and she chased his lips for more. His hesitation fell apart, his kiss was urgent, giving. She realized he hadn't known if she wanted to taste herself on his tongue.

She wrapped both arms around him and urged upward, into him, not subtle herself. He groaned, breathy and soft, nudged a trail along her jaw to her ear, down the side of her neck, back again. Like adoration.

"I made you cry?"

"No."

He nodded and pressed his lips to her clavicle, a bite of teeth.

She gasped and her hips rubbed his, a bite of friction. "Okay, yes."

"Why?"

"So good," she sighed.

"Now or-"

She pinched his ear and he laughed; he sounded happy. He sounded pleased.

He sounded surprised.

He deserved something honest, something raw. "So good with you," she whispered. She had to clutch at his ears to keep him down against her breasts, wanting both the sensations he built inside her but also the avoidance. "Because I'd thought you were lost forever."

He tore out of her grip and flashed her a terrible look, crawled up her body to settle over her, hard, once more. "No."

"But almost."

He shook his head, mute stubbornness. Incarnate. But she knew. She'd done her share of fucking it up, but so had he. Her heart had been broken when she'd stepped on a plane to London, and her heart had been broken when she'd slinked back to Heathrow a mess.

But he had unbroken her heart.

He kissed her. He kissed her again with all of his insistence. She loved that too, loved feeling his body insisting on her. Tears were stupid. Tears were only the product of exhaustion and hormones and lust and emotion, not reality.

"You ever cry in sex before?" he husked, licking under her cheek.

She grunted and kneed his thigh, and he laughed again but it wasn't at her. He wasn't laughing at her, he was delighted.

He had needed her crying over that first orgasm, and maybe she had needed it too.

She pressed her hands down his back and into his ass, pulled him closer. "You all talk, Rick Castle?"

He chuckled again but he was nodding against her cheek. "I am a lot of talk. I'm also a lot of action, so consider this your recovery time, Beckett, and let me do what I'm so good at."

"What you're good at?" She caught him by the nape, pulled him back so she could see him. "Is that seduction or-"

"Loving you," he said. He brushed his hand over her forehead to clear her eyes; it cleared him too. "I'm good at loving you, if you'll let me."

"Yeah," she choked out. Nodded. "Yes." Her breath came quickly. "Please."

"Already begging?"

She laughed. Because the jokes were still there, just like she'd expected. Just as she'd hoped. They were still them, and that felt good.

—–


	28. Chapter 28

M-ish

—–

She begged.

Oh, she begged.

It was too much, too exquisite, the feeling of him. She rose and fell, she coiled, she wound tighter and higher, needing.

He coaxed her, words and hips and mouth, coaxed and urged and demanded, and she begged. She ground his name in her teeth and called out with a decimated voice, all for him, for this intensity of feeling.

She clutched at his flanks, fingers digging into his glutes as the power went through him and into her. Strength, force of will. His hands were wide and terrible and holding her to him, pressing himself deeper. She fell apart twice before he broke rhythm, and his hips stuttered, and finally he roared against her and spilled out.

She was shaking and skin-aflame. She felt him everywhere.

His head lifted, a glancing kiss, more fumbling than anything. Fingers against her breast, sparks of pleasure that burst through her. His mouth descending, nuzzling, spreading heat through her torso, between her legs.

"Rick," she gasped, drawing a knee in to stop him. "Hang on. Hang on, I'm-"

 _dizzy_

He grunted, his face pressed to her stomach, licking sweat at her belly button. She gripped him by the hair and yanked his head up, dragged him back to the pillow. "Stay, stay." She turned on her side to look at him, to stroke her fingers down his chest.

His eyes were intent, unrepentant. She twined her legs through his to bring her body closer, their bodies, and his arm snaked around her. Brought their chests flush. His nose rubbed against hers, sweet, silly, and she closed her eyes.

His cheeks were rough; they made her skin raw. She was aware all over, every line of her body where it touched and pressed along his own.

He was remarkably silent in the aftermath. Waiting on her, it seemed. She brushed her hand along his pec, thumb against his nipple, and his body jumped, flexed.

She grinned. He must have felt it against his cheek because then she felt his answering grin. Felt and heard the rumble in his chest as he stirred. She dropped her hand to thread her fingers around him and he stuttered a breath against her ear.

"You still-?" he roughened.

"Mm, good, I'm good. Let's go again."

His hand swiped down her leg, gripped the back of her knee, and suddenly he was rolling them. His back hit the mattress and she landed on top of him, delicious friction, both of them groaning.

She planted her hands on his shoulders and lifted her torso away from his, just enough to grind down, just enough to spread her thighs. He was helping, eagerly, a light in his eyes as he looked up at her.

She stared back down. The tease was in her, now that the urgency had muted, but even that subsumed in the way he looked at her.

He was in love with her.

She leaned in above him, her hair falling forward, the tumble of her gaze to his. "Why…"

His eyebrow quirked, but at her sudden wordlessness, he palmed her hips, thumbs meeting just under her belly button, squeezed. "What?"

"Why didn't you order coffee at breakfast?" she whispered. A burr in her heart.

A crease in his brow, but his hands coasted up to palm her breasts, then around to her shoulders and down her back. "You know, I actually thought we might need our sleep. Figured we could do without the caffeine."

The burr loosened, and so did her body, her hips dropping, more solid contact.

He rumbled something, worked her hips up and back in a painfully tantalizing way.

"Wh-what?" she gasped, distracted by the feeling building between them. He'd said something; he had said-

"Coffee means to you what it means to me?" He reached up and tucked her hair over her shoulder, combed a lock behind her ear. He was looking at her like she was the world.

Her lips spread in that shy flowering sensation, warmed through and orienting to his touch in a way she'd never understood before.

"There it is," he murmured. His thumb against her cheek to her lips. Her teeth caught his thumb, her tongue licked, but the tenderness on his face was unshakeable. "Anything for that smile."

Her heart flipped.

—–


	29. Chapter 29

—–

She woke.

The room was dark. Not just blackout curtains dark, but the absolute of blind night. She was immobile and heavy, pressed into the center of a feather bed, a weight at her back and across her hips.

 _Rick._

A dart of breath punctured her lungs. Joy bloomed incredulous under her skin.

He was lying partially on top of her, a leg furry and tickling against the back of hers, his cheek at the slope of her spine, breath skirting her shoulder blade.

She eased her arm out from under her body and reached lightly back until she found flesh. Warm and firm, the rise of his thigh where he'd curled into her. Feelings suffused her, things she couldn't identify, a sensation of needing to protect him that was entirely unlike being the cop to his civilian.

She drew her arm back into her body and laid half under him, aware she had made many mistakes, was still making them, but he wasn't one.

His phone lit up on the bedside table, a text message. _Mother._

But the angle also showed her the flare of white numbers for the time and her stomach dropped out.

She had not called the Twelfth; she didn't even know where her phone was. The bathroom counter? She'd taken one day's medical leave which she didn't technically have, bought an exorbitantly-priced last-minute ticket to London with her credit card and money she didn't have, and then she had simply not returned to New York.

He had caught her arm and marched her back down the terminal to baggage claim and taxi service, and then-

Mistakes upon mistakes, but he wasn't one.

She needed to call in… sick? Indisposed? Lovesick?

Kate sighed and edged a knee across the mattress, hooked her leg over the side of the bed. It was _work_ to get out from under him without jostling too much, but he seemed just as dead to the world as she'd been moments ago.

She stumbled a bit when she finally got to her feet, one knee refusing to hold her up. She hadn't had marathon sex in… okay, really there was no comparison. What they'd done all through London's afternoon was unleash a frenetic and wild desperation that had become something entirely animal, only to mellow and soften into this… this…

She had no idea.

She'd never done _this_ before.

Kate padded silently through the room and crossed the threshold of the sitting room. The bathroom was just off that, close to the front door, and the curtains here were still wide open.

There was something thrilling about being naked before them, being fresh from their bed and still raw in places while she went to the bathroom.

Her phone was on the counter where she'd left it, but she waited until after she'd washed her hands to pick it up. New York time it was three in the afternoon; she'd missed even the half day she'd been planning on.

And unfortunately, it was Captain Gates who answered Esposito's phone.

"Detective Beckett," the woman said icily.

"S-sir." Kate hunched forward, caught sight of her nude reflection in the mirror - and the marks he'd made on her skin. "Captain Gates."

"I suggest you come up with a very good excuse this time, Detective."

"No excuse," she answered. She couldn't keep the energy out of her voice, couldn't fake sick even if she had wanted to. _Castle_ was on the tip of her tongue. "I'm not in the city, sir."

"You're not in the city."

"No, sir."

She heard Captain Gates's disdain - and her disappointment in Kate - clearly. Even in the silence.

But she also heard heavy feet on carpet and the grunt of satisfaction when he spotted her in the doorway. She heard his pleased growl - how _well_ she knew those sounds he made - and the rumble of his demand as he stalked forward.

"What do you propose I do, Detective Beckett? This is irresponsible and, frankly, childish behavior."

Two broad arms surrounded her, a warm chest pressed against her back. All naked. So naked.

"Sir, I apologize for the way I'm putting out - you out-" Castle's snort in her neck made her skin shiver. "I can assure you I had no intention of being careless. I can't make it back to the city in time for tomorrow's roll call either, but I-"

Teeth against her neck made her knees melt, but Castle hoisted her up again.

She tilted her head against the side of his. "I'm sorry, sir. I can't make it back in time. It's personal. It's - I had to - it was a recommendation from my therapist."

The silence on the other end seemed to shift, but the body behind her did as well. Both listening.

Captain Gates gave a dissatisfied noise. "I can't exactly argue with that without getting a call from your Union rep, can I?"

"I… no?" she guessed. It had sounded like a prompt, like Gates was giving her the right words to say. "You'd hear from my Union rep, yes, sir."

A put-upon sigh. "Fine. But you will be written up for not informing me of your medical leave."

"Yes, sir."

The phone call dropped just that quickly and Kate lowered the phone, turned in his loose embrace to find Castle watching her warily.

"Your therapist?" he said, forced mirth in his voice that badly hid the stiffness in his cheeks. "Didn't really sound like you made that up."

"I didn't. There's a standing order from my therapist, though I asked him not to put it in my file. But that's not actually what I was talking about, even if that's what I led Gates to believe."

His arms tightened, but trouble was lining his face. "What were you talking about."

She pressed her free hand to his bare chest, skimming her fingers up to his throat. It was unlike him to be so still. "You."

Castle's eyes were on her hand but he lifted his gaze. "Me?"

"He said you were good for me. _You_ were the recommendation from my therapist, Rick."

"Oh." A wolfish grin came over his face. "He's a very smart man. After a phone call like that, so stressful and anxiety-ridden, it's abundantly clear you should heed your therapist's sage advice. What do you say? How about we get you a big dose of me?"

She laughed even as she slid her arms around his neck and pushed up on her toes, that rubbing friction that burned between them. "Hm, you may be right."

A devilish amusement came over his face and he opened his mouth to speak-

But she pressed her fingers over his lips. "If you say sexual healing, I'll have to do damage, Rick Castle."

He darted past her blockade to nip at her neck. "Sexual healing. And do your worst, Kate Beckett. Not afraid of damage."

—–


	30. Chapter 30

—–

They laid face to face in the bed, sheets twisted mostly around her ankles, his body bare to her. A knee drawn up. His arm extended towards her so that his fingers played with the ends of her hair. Brushing the strands against the tops of her breasts as he talked.

"I got turned around," he was saying. His face was so animated when he was honest with her. "I'm better with words-" Here he chuffed at himself, shrugged in the bed. "-obviously, I am, twenty-six bestsellers, but I mean, when I'm told, with words, point blank, no beating around the bush."

"Direct," she supplied. "I'm - that's what I suck at. According to my therapist."

He laughed, and she stiffened, but his knee came up and knocked into hers. "According to everyone, Beckett, you suck at being direct with your emotions. I believe Espo has called it 'close to the vest.'"

"How kind," she muttered.

"But you're talking to me now." Her hair was brushed against her chin; he was grinning. "You're ridiculously in love with me."

She laughed, but her cheeks were burning. She caught his hand and tugged, but all she managed was to drag herself forward into him.

"I'm not _wrong_ ," he said, grumbling a little but his eyes were still amused. Kind. He had such a beautiful smile when it was real; she hadn't often seen it these days.

"Missed your smile," she sighed, touching his lips with two fingers. The heat in her face burned higher. "Stupid. Never mind-"

"I got turned around," he husked. His hand curved around hers, hung on. "I got twisted up, Kate."

She nodded.

"No, don't just… talk to me."

She let out a shaky breath, curling her hand into the protection of his. "I wasn't. I'm not. I mean, I can talk to you. I am talking. I promise."

"So talk."

"I thought we said," she choked out. "I thought it _was_ clear. We talked that day at the swings and you came back."

"I know," he sighed.

"I was just trying to - be more than this, wanted to be more than busted up and walled off before we… but I'm sorry, you're stuck with my neurotic fucked up-"

"When I said talk," he interrupted, so grave, "I didn't mean you could talk like that about yourself."

She stared at him, too astonished to go on.

"If I made you feel that, I'm sorry. Neurotic? You?"

"Complicated," she whispered.

His face blanked. But she knew him now; she had seen his face when he loved her, and this was panic in love.

"She messaged you at breakfast," Kate added weakly.

"She did?" His surprise was organic, and he actually reached past her to pluck his phone off the bedside table.

She gaped.

He saw her face and dropped his phone. "Oh. That's. Oh."

" _Oh_?"

Wide eyes. "I wasn't - I didn't mean to-" He closed his mouth, stared at her.

"You hurt my feelings," she growled.

He laughed, a little plosive from his lips, but he was shaking his head and reaching in to snag her by the arm before she could climb out of bed. "No, not - I'm just surprised, pleasantly surprised by the fact that you just _told_ me. Words. Like I said, right, telling me directly."

Her nostrils flared; she gave a half-hearted struggle.

"Kate. I'm sorry. My intention was not to hurt your feelings. It was thoughtless. I was only - she borrowed my car. We didn't have sex. It was just-" He stopped, watching her. A helplessness in his face.

She tried to think, not react, not be so - so messed up. "Don't apologize for that - her," she said finally. "I'm not - that's… God, Rick, if we have to go back and start enumerating our sins, I'm gonna be here all week confessing." She tried to make that all of it. She had made mistakes too; she had lost the faith. But it burst out of her mouth in a rush. "But why would you answer her text in _bed_ with me?"

His hands caught hers even as she tried to hide her face. Pulled her arms down, hands clasped between his. "Because you've made me confident in you," he said. He kissed her knuckles, the impression of his lips to her fingers. "Because it's obvious I love you, it's all over my face, it's pressed into your body from mine, it's in the space between us that isn't space any longer." His kiss trailed to her wrist, lingering, before his head lifted to give her his undivided attention. "Because what can possibly compare to you?"

She still felt the burn of his lips at her wrist where her heart was doing its mad and desperate pulse.

What could compare?

—–


	31. Chapter 31

—–

"We'll have to get up and shower and pack soon." His arm tightened as he spoke, his nose buried into the nape of her neck. "Not that you don't smell good. I really love sweat and sex on you."

She didn't laugh, even though she supposed it was amusing, or meant to be. She didn't laugh because they did actually have to head back to Heathrow soon. And then get on a plane and land in New York and somehow keep this up, make it real.

"Kate."

"Yeah," she answered. "Soon."

His arm again. Maybe he was just as afraid as she was.

"I don't want to leave this bed," she whispered.

He groaned and pushed his whole body into hers, practically crushing her to the mattress. How did he know that was exactly what she needed? To be overwhelmed by him, to be - in a way - consumed.

His lips to her nape, her bare shoulder, a rough breath against her skin. "You'll leave with me." He was pressing his whole forehead into her shoulder blade, a hot breath, a groan. "You're leaving with me. With me-"

"Yes," she said. A ragged sigh as she tried to turn into him. Her body twisting, her arms winding around his neck. "I'm with you." She nudged her nose into his temple. "But what happens when we get home? What - happens when she texts you - or anyone does - or when - or when your daughter-"

"Stop."

She swallowed. She felt bad, a wave dragging her out. His daughter who glared instead of smiled these days, his mother who used to like her but hadn't said much since the shooting. The funs and uncomplicateds of the world who would be calling him, _Ricky_ , wanting one last go round the block, or whatever it was.

"What about the Twelfth?" he mumbled.

"Um. My boss-"

"She hates me," he whispered, little boy sounding. His head lifted; he wasn't joking, wasn't playing it off with his usual confidence. "She really hates me." A wash of panic. "We can't tell her. She'll be so mad at you."

Kate blinked. "We can't tell her?" she echoed.

"She thinks you're the best thing since sliced bread, professionally speaking. And I don't disagree, I mean really. Look at you. But she _hates_ me. You attach yourself to me and she'll be more than just disappointed."

"She's a professional, Castle." But her protest felt weak. A frailty inside her she was losing control over. "You really want to hide?"

"It could be kinda hot," he said, eyebrows wriggling. But he wasn't selling it. Or he was trying too hard to sell it. Maybe that was it.

"No," she said. "I don't want it to be a secret. I mean, keep it from Gates, okay, just for the sake of assigned partnerships and - they discourage it in the NYPD but they don't forbid it. But Lanie and the boys?"

"My mother and Alexis," he added.

"Oh." Her world lurched. "Oh, maybe so. Alexis hates me."

"No."

Maybe yes. She didn't push it; she was that selfish about him right now. Later, later she could figure out how to be better for him, later when she had more therapy hours behind her, when this wasn't so new and impossible.

"No secrets," he said roughly. He was shifting above her, shifting right up - oh - right there. "No more damn secrets, Kate."

She tightened her arms around him, pushed her body up so he'd feel how ready she was. Let him. Let them do this instead, let them forget secrets and the impossible and the things they wanted to protect.

But she couldn't help saying, "This is going to blow up in our faces."

"I won't let it." His fingers pressing right where he knew - oh he knew so well now - and her thighs parted, shifting and nudging closer. "I won't let it," he repeated, an oath against her mouth. "I won't let it."

"You're right, you're right." She'd promise him anything if he just kept-

"Yes," she moaned.

Her whole body opened for him.

—–


	32. Chapter 32

—–

They were touching each other like this would be their last. Last moment in bed in the darkness, last shower standing under the spray staring at naked wet flesh, last glimpse of love.

The mirror was fogged. He stood behind her and she felt the heat arcing between them. His hands framed her shoulders and his lips dusted the nape of her neck.

She stepped back into him to feel all of his body. He made that low sound in his chest, like purring, a vibrating rumble. She was addicted to that sound; it let her know she'd done something exactly right.

She dragged her palms at his flanks, let her nails lightly score his skin. He hummed and licked water from her skin, making her sigh. Her insides were sparklers, popping and flaming up, capricious, bright. She wanted to turn around and shove him somewhere just stable enough to do this all over again, but she always wanted the slow drag of his kiss against her shoulder.

He was so good at seduction. So serious in one moment, so amusing the next.

He batted her hand away when she moved for more. A _tsk_ noise in his throat that made her lips quirk. And then break, the smile spreading. He made his contented sound again, and she knew then he was studying her, every inch, just as he always had.

 _Your turn_ , he murmured, breathed against her skin. _Still your turn._

She loved her turn. His had been fun too, but the devotion, the ardent worship, cataloging her, inside and out, how he touched her like he was writing the scene and trying to get every last detail perfect.

Memorizing.

For a long drought?

Only. He didn't say _I want to go home with you._ He didn't ask _can you stay the night with me._ He wasn't making demands, he wasn't addressing it. Neither of them dared test those waters, as if theirs was a shaky craft.

It was. She had known it would be stupid to start things when she wasn't capable, wasn't skilled. A relationship begun in desperation - what were their chances?

His fingers curled at her clavicle, hooking. She felt possessed, possessive. She wanted a claim on him other than promises in the moment of ecstasy.

His nose in her wet hair, his teeth against her nape. She shivered as if in slow-motion, a long body roll, sensation going through her. His kiss at her neck, his breath skirting her skin.

She needed more. She was selfish, she was unsteady on her relationship feet; she needed something.

"Rick."

His fingers sharpened at her shoulder, drawing her back, tighter. "Kate."

She closed her eyes, wanting to feel everything. The press of him at her back. The strength. More than she had. "What about tomorrow?"

"We'll have breakfast tomorrow," he murmured. "Together."

"I… have to work."

"I know."

She was bewildered by the certainty in his voice. Hadn't he been touching her like she might disappear? Like the end of London was the end of them? Like they'd found a moment out of time and real life began on the other side of a flight…

"That's why I'll be bringing coffee."

She opened her eyes. His were watching her in the mirror. Their gazes connected, held.

She turned and faced him, no barrier, and laid her hands on his shoulders, her face upturned to his. She stroked her thumbs against the cords of his neck, shifted her hands to cup his face. "My place." If he could be certain, so could she. Her thumbs roved his bristly cheeks, the rasp against her fingerprints. "Six-thirty? Can you-"

"Six-thirty," he said, nodding. It made his lips brush her thumb. "With coffee."

 _And you'll come home with me._ She almost said it, almost. But for the best she didn't. For the best she took this slow, as it came, day to day. He had a responsibility to his family, a daughter who deserved at least one parent's stability in her life; Kate could not claim something she couldn't give back.

"Don't look so heartbroken," he said quietly. His arms drew around her, a great shaggy beast catching her up. He squeezed the breath out of her. "This isn't the end."

—–


	33. Chapter 33

—–

He was escorting her to dinner at a pub down the block; she liked the way their hands clasped, a loose thing, not needy and panicky and too tight. Especially since his fingers were so wide they separated hers with a kind of force she hadn't expected.

Her fingers hurt after. Not like this though, the curve of a bear paw around her hand. She had not expected any of the reality of them, none of it was turning out like she thought.

Except maybe her crushing insecurity. That had been a warning from her therapist, and of course that was still there, raging inside her, a nasty voice in her head.

She was going to have to work on that. Ruthlessly suppress it. Was there any other way? She had to be more.

"Hey."

Her stride faltered at his soft call; she glanced at him, her fingers tangling in his as if to keep him. As if he might let go.

"Hey. Where are you?" he said.

She gave him a weak smile. "Too much in my head."

"I like your head," he said. And he stopped, reaching up to touch her cheek, fingers through her hair, and suddenly that pithy comeback, the clever line, was something real. "Like how you think. Incredibly turned on by how you think." His eyebrows danced, silly, sweet.

"Sometimes I can't shut it off," she admitted, felt herself leaning into him.

His hand cupped the back of her head; they were causing a traffic jam on the sidewalk. He didn't seem to care. "Beckett. Don't you dare change."

"Not change, just _more_. Want to be more than this."

"Not for me." He leaned in and kissed her, the heat she'd come to know now suffused by an awe she hadn't thought possible. He was in awe of her. Why? "Don't change for me. I like this. I have what I want."

She let out a breath near his jaw and circled her arms around his waist, the soft and worn material of his shirt that smelled like - them. "I'm kind of miserably insecure when it comes to… you."

"That's ridiculous," he scoffed. But his hand at the back of her head grew urgent, strong. "You're secure when it comes to me. You don't need to do any work-"

"I ought to," she interrupted. She was speaking into his neck. She wished she had heels. She wanted to speak right to his face, let him know she meant it. "You deserve better."

"Not better than you. No one is better than you."

She sighed. "Not selfless enough to say you're wrong about that, but I hope I love you enough to mean it when I say you ought to have more from me."

Castle didn't speak for a moment; she knew that was a rough one to swallow. She was a wall, she was trapped inside a round tower that she had built herself. But-

"That's - is it pathetic that hearing you say it just kind shocks my whole system? In a good way, I mean."

"Hearing me-" She laughed, choking on it, a little sorrowed, a lot pleased. "I love you. Is that what you want to hear? Really do love you, Rick Castle."

"Mm-hm. I know you do. Can tell. Four times in just two hours, and I-"

She clapped her hand over his mouth and laughed again, alight with it. Lightened. How he did it, she had no idea. But he made them work.

His lips twitched behind her palm; she dropped her hand. He was grinning.

"Get moving, Castle. I need food."

"Here we are already." He nudged between her shoulder blades, ushered her off the sidewalk and to the threshold of the pub. "Quick bite before we go."

"They have eggs here?" But she was grinning and he understood. Or seemed to. He was chuckling.

"Detective, for you, they have anything."

"I want the same as you," she told him. And then turned, looked him in the eye despite the dim interior of the pub. A hostess was trying to grab their attention, but Kate blocked her out. "I want the same as you, and in case it's not clear, that's this. Us. I want us."

He laughed again, but she saw she'd lighted him up too. Just as he'd done for her.

—–


	34. Chapter 34

—–

"So," he said, offering her a sip of his beer. "The ghost."

Kate took it, made a face at the taste. "Not this one."

"Okay, then try the other." She had rolled her eyes when he'd ordered three, but he'd whined at her and said they only had one dinner to try as many things as they could cram in.

But she plucked the locally brewed Guinness from his fingers and brought it to her lips.

Bitter. Sweet. The burn in her vocal cords. She blinked to keep from coughing, surprised at how much of a hit it was.

"Yeah?" he grinned. "I knew it. Best are the locals."

"They brew it here?" She took another sip and let the sensation wash through her, a little heavy in the aftertaste, but heavy like dark chocolate. Good things. She liked it.

"They do. Good, huh."

"Yeah," she admitted. "The ghost?"

"Oh, yes, promised you the story."

"Please," she grinned. But she had to sit back when the waiter bellied up to the table with their fish and chips. Dark wooden plates, soaked with grease, metal medallions on the rims at either side, like handles. She'd never seen something like it, and they'd just walked into a pub off the street-

"You knew about this place?" she said, narrowing her eyes at him.

"Maybe." Eyebrows dancing, smug mouth.

She really loved that smug mouth. And the eyebrows. And how pleased he was with his planning. And how she could picture him naked.

"The ghost," she prompted. "Which I don't believe in, but I'm willing to hear you out."

"You saw him too."

"What _too_? There was a man walking - a porter, a bellhop, whatever. And then you saw another person, maybe the same man, who knows? But I didn't see what you saw and you didn't see what I saw, so how can you possibly say we saw the same thing?"

"Don't ruin my story with your logic."

She laughed. He looked surprised, but it evolved into a slow smile that looked _real_. She hadn't realized just how much of him was persona until today. Like the vulnerable-hearted little boy of him was inside all along, hiding behind the nine-year old act.

All an act. He was far more insecure than she'd thought possible.

"Keep going with your story, Rick."

His persona didn't return; the vulnerability transformed to eager earnestness right before her very eyes. He leaned in, forgetting his food for the thrill of the his ghost story.

"They say if you stay on the third floor, you'll see the striking figure of a man in formal evening wear, pacing the halls. A velvet cutaway coat with pearl buttons, the high Victorian collar with scarf-tie tucked into a perfectly embroidered sage vest."

"Victorian," she murmured, pausing her own meal to watch him tell a good story. How she loved the flop of his hair into his eyes where he hadn't any gel this morning to make it stay back. And the crease at his eyes when he was happy. "Our ghost is a Victorian man in evening wear? Did he overbook his dance card?"

"Oh, no, my dear. He was a doctor. A newlywed, just arrived at the hotel to celebrate his honeymoon. He and his wife attended a few soirees around town - she had been dying to go to London-"

"Oh, _ha ha_ , Castle."

He flashed her a grin. "And she seemed to want to make the most of it. He repeatedly asked her if they could go back to their room, but she kept insisting one more party, one more ball, one more bar. He obliged her because he loved her, and she was beautiful, but he began to have his suspicions."

"Ooh, now it gets good. I smell a murder-suicide."

A raised eyebrow for her interruption. "No one knows what really happened that night in their room. They arrived back at the hotel very late, nearly one in the morning, both had imbibed-"

"You're not somehow trying to make this about us, are you?"

A narrowing of his eyes. "Both had imbibed. They appeared, on the outside, to be very much in love. Other guests later recalled seeing him fawn all over her, seeing him kiss the back of her neck where her hair was piled up and the soft tendrils curled down."

Her breath was stolen.

"On the third floor, a butler witnessed the newlyweds holding hands, their fingers playing, his catching at her dress, hers tucking into his coat pocket. Staring deeply into each other's eyes."

Oh, God, it was a ghost story. It was going to end badly.

"But something changed. Or all was not as it seemed. Because the next morning, when check-out had come and gone, a hall porter convinced a maid to unlock the door and investigate."

Castle paused, his fingers circling the rim of his glass. His eyes studying some place far away. A room in a hotel they just walked away from.

"What?" she said. "What did they find?"

"He had slit her throat. She had bled to death in their beautiful bed, the sheets stained scarlet."

Her breath caught.

"Then he had turned the knife on himself. Dragged long gouges into his flesh." His fingers touched his wrist and pulled back to his elbow. "Both arms. All the way up. He died on his knees beside the bed, his hand in hers."

"God."

Castle's eyes returned to hers. "The story goes that he can never rest. He loved her, she was going to leave him. He tried to keep them together forever. But her spirit moved on, found rest and peace, and his has haunted the third floor, and that room, ever since."

She stared at him, her heartbeat thumping once, and slow, before it resumed like normal.

She let out a hot breath and kicked his shin under the table. "That better not have been a subtle way of saying you're never going to let me go. For the record, that is _not_ my idea of romance."

He grinned. "Sure it is."

Maybe a little.

—–


	35. Chapter 35

—–

No time for the Ferris wheel, no time to stroll the city and take in the sights with him. They pointed things out from the windows of the cab, her experiences in college, his on various book tours. "We'll go to Paris," he was saying. "City of love. Rome. A cruise around the Greek Isles."

"I have no money," she laughed, shrugging. "But I'd like to come back here with you one day."

"One year anniversary," he said promptly. "Settled. Ask for the time off. I'll book our flights. Don't even think about the money."

Already anniversaries, gifts. Maybe in a year she'd let him buy her a plane ticket and hotel and the rest. Not today.

"Oh," she winced. "You bought my ticket home. I can repay-"

"No." His fingers crushed hers, the slumbering bear awakened. "No, don't. I'm not going to argue with you about this." He was frustrated with her; he looked angry almost. "I get to do this for you. I get to pay for things."

Her jaw dropped. He turned his head away, his eyes cool blue flames. Oh, yes, angry was right. But so was she.

"Because you're the guy? Because you make more money than me? Don't be such a neanderthal. You shouldn't pay-"

His head whipped around, nostrils flaring. "I have obscene amounts of money that don't mean a damn thing if I can't make life easier somehow for the people I love. Whether we're sleeping together or not, you're on that list. I am _going_ to-"

"Force yourself on me?"

He startled back.

She lifted a finger to stall his indignant response. "I understand gifts are your love language, Rick. I do get that. I love you, so I'm going to work on being a willing - a grateful recipient. But there are lines, and you don't get to bulldoze them just because we're sleeping together."

His jaw clamped tight. A moment where she could see him trying to find the most persuasive words to use on her.

And then he sighed. "What happened to you being insecure about me?"

She huffed. "You convinced me otherwise. Thoroughly. Four times in two hours, and then twice more-"

"Don't know my own power." He snagged her hand and brought it to his lips. But he wasn't smiling. "Kate. After you were shot. I tried to - I never saw you this summer, not even a phone call. And when I tried to cover some costs, no one would tell me a damn thing. Patient confidentiality, I wasn't allowed to know if you'd received treatment there, let alone the costs. I didn't even really know if you were alive _._ I wanted to do _something_ to help after you were shot, something to just - make it easier for you to _live_ with this. But I was denied even that."

Oh, how deeply she had hurt him. How deeply she had been hurting. "That wasn't my intention," she started. Her free hand came up and gently pushed the hair back from his forehead, curving at his temple to blunt her words. "I wasn't thinking about you, I was consumed with me. My pain, the struggle to breathe through nightmares, the effort of sitting up straight. You don't know what that's like."

"You didn't give me the chance to know."

She studied him, her fingers in that flop of his hair again, pushing back what wouldn't be contained. "If you and I were having this conversation even six hours ago, I'd be so afraid. But I'm not. Because you _have_ convinced me. So I don't want you to think this is going to make or break us."

His gaze came back to hers, catching. "The money. Or… this past summer?"

"Any of it. Either direction, right? My issues with needing space, and yours with needing to be - in that space. How we can compromise. So long as we're honest about these things, this is going to always work itself out."

He had a hesitation to his nod that started to unravel that confidence their night together had been building. She dropped her hand. "Castle?"

His hesitation was a bit longer this time. They were nearing Heathrow; she could see it on the horizon, all lighted up.

"Rick."

"There's something I need to tell you. In the interests of being honest."

—–


	36. Chapter 36

—–

"Will you let me check us in first?" he said. His voice was low, bleak, and it only fed her panic.

"Can't you just tell me now?"

"It's somewhat involved."

God.

But she nodded and gestured, and he let out a long breath and took the little bag from her - they had packed their random odds and ends and yesterday's clothes into a bag he'd bought in the hotel's salon. Leather. Beautiful.

He had to tell her something. In the interests of honesty.

Surely if he had slept with Jacinda he would have told her before sleeping with her?

Her stomach soured; the beer, the dinner-

"Kate?"

She jerked forward on the sidewalk and stepped into the airport after him, not seeing any of it. Blind with anxiety.

She was on birth control as a matter of course, but there hadn't been any protection. No one had asked, _are you clean_ , and oh God, what a stupid idiot. Oh _God_. What a dumb _girl_ she'd been, letting that feeling get the best of her and sweep her away.

He took her hand and tugged her towards the airline counter. He gave her a sharp look, apparently noticing how clammy and limp her hand was.

"Rick," she said faintly. She felt _faint_. She felt like she might throw up. She cleared her throat when he didn't hear her. "Castle."

He halted in the middle of the concourse, people flowing around them, the line back towards the door and roped off. "What's wrong? You look like you're about to throw up."

"I can't - just talk. Just tell me. I can't stand here and not-"

"Kate," he gritted out, glancing behind him towards the airline counter. "There are kiosks. Just let me-"

"No. _Tell me."_

He released her hand, dropped the bag on the floor. "I made a deal." He stared at her; she had no comprehension. He scrubbed both hands down his face. "I made a deal to save your life."

"What." His face. His face was - she didn't understand. "You made a deal. With who?" With- "Him?" His eyes were so dead, so bleak. "How… are you _part_ of this?"

"What?" he croaked. "No. Part of what? No."

Her hands were shaking again, and it wasn't a hangover. "Made a deal with _who_ , Castle. Who did you-"

"A man contacted me. After you were shot, he received a package in the mail. From Captain Montgomery. He was too late to prevent the shooter, but he could - he can keep you safe. He's blackmailing-"

"Who?" she choked. "How - who is - tell me who it is-"

"I don't know, I don't know, Kate. I swear. Anonymous guy; he showed me a few things, things we already knew but weren't made public. He calls me sometimes. To warn you off."

She jerked back, lifted a hand to her mouth. He stared at her, his head bobbing, his body half turning away. A glance back to the kiosks before the airline counter.

She couldn't think. It wasn't there. Nothing was there. Things she'd built up in her head, the panic attack she'd been half inside of, the heartsick way she'd expected a different confession.

She had nothing.

"Ah, I'll just… check in," he said quietly. "Give you a second."

He glanced at her, another moment where he studied her face, but she was struggling just to breathe. To keep breathing.

He met a guy. Made a deal. For her life.

And half her wall in rubble, the other mortared with the fear, the crushing terrible certainty, that she was marked with a crosshairs, that a bullet had her name on it.

Castle grimaced, turned his head.

And then he walked away.

—–


	37. Chapter 37

—–

She sat stiffly in the first class lounge, a glass of wine untouched in the armrest's cup holder.

Castle had been quiet. Sweet, but quiet. Waiting on her. She didn't know what to think, let alone what to say to have the conversation they probably ought to have.

She sort of wished he would just talk until she caught up. Like he usually did.

"Um, so…" He gave her a serious look, drumming his fingers on the armrest of his own chair.

She took a breath, bracing herself for it. She knew he liked to talk. This would be - good. This would be good.

"Can I hold your hand? Or are you too mad at me?"

Her jaw dropped. "I'm not mad," she choked out, grabbing for his hand. "I didn't know you wanted to - you want to hold my hand?"

"Yeah," he said, a pink flush at his ears. His fingers squirmed in the grip of hers, his whole body squirmed. "Stupid. I-"

"No, it's not," she rushed out. And then the words stopped, gummed up, and she had nothing. She could only stare at him and wish so hard.

He flipped their hands so he was hanging on to her now. "You're not mad?"

"I'm…"

He waited, and she faltered, and then his face fell. "You're hurt. I - hurt you."

"I… yeah." She felt it now, in a way she hadn't before there were words for it. She was - cut to the quick. Old wounds that hadn't healed.

He reached in and grabbed for her other hand, and she realized she'd been pressing her knuckles against her sternum, at the scar. He leaned in over her hands like he was clutching at her for dear life.

"No, don't be-" She shook her head. "I'm not mad."

"I can handle mad," he said. "But this is worse."

She shook her head again, mute. She didn't want to cry again; she was so tired of being a mess, being an emotional wreck. She wasn't that person.

"I only wanted to keep you safe. _Keep_ you from getting hurt. I couldn't do a damn thing to help this summer but this I could do."

She nodded, as if agreeing, and maybe she did in theory. It sounded good; it just felt bad.

A lot of this felt bad. Had felt bad. She had thought, naively, she wouldn't be hurt again. But that was moronic. Of course she was going to get hurt, of course _he_ would do the hurting - he was what mattered most. It had hurt when Montgomery had made that deal. It wouldn't have hurt so much if she hadn't loved so much.

"I love you," she finally said, bobbing her head. It was all she knew to say; it was the answer to a question neither of them had asked.

"I know," he said quietly. "I know. Is it enough?"

She sucked in a ragged breath. "Is it enough for you? How I treated you this summer and how I - couldn't change it even if I wanted to. And I don't. I needed to not be - not be with you, Castle. And I am sorry I hurt you. I'm sorry my working a suspect in the box hurt you when all it would have taken from me, on my part, was to be a little more clear. I'm-"

"Hey." He stilled her words with a brush of his lips to her knuckles, his clutch dragging her hands against his chest. "It's okay. It's done." He was leaning so far out of his chair that he looked like he might crawl into her lap.

(Oh, God, she really wanted him to. She _needed_ him to. She ached to think only about his hand between her legs and how high, how so very high she could be launched.)

"Are you thinking about sex," he growled. Not really a question, and she shook her head helplessly but it wound up being a wordless affirmation. He grit his teeth and squeezed her hands between his. "That's not fair. You can't railroad - train wreck - a conversation like that. I need you to talk to me about this. About Smith-"

"Smith?"

His face slipped. "That's - the name he gave me."

"The man you made a deal with."

His head hung. "Yeah. Obviously that's a fake name." He released her hands to scrub at his face, a weary sigh. "When we get back to New York, I'll show you everything - I've been investigating on my own because I know it's not fair to ask you to quit-"

"No," she croaked. Horror clogged her throat. She fisted the edge of his jacket and pulled him in. "No, you damn well better not be investigating. _Castle."_

"I'm sorry, sorry, I know your mother's case is sacrosanct. I _know_. I wouldn't have if it weren't for this restriction-"

"You can't investigate on your own, Castle. You can't. What happens to _you_ if they find out? He finds out? _God._ I don't even know who, where to even start if you wind up missing, or please God no, if you're dead and I-"

"No!" His face was so startled it nearly made her laugh. But this wasn't funny. He leaned an elbow onto her arm rest, getting closer. "No, Kate. It's not me, it's you. They don't want you-"

"They don't want _anyone_. They want to keep it buried, Castle. You can't either. You stop. If I can't, you can't."

He let out a frustrated huff. "No, but-"

"If I can't, _you can't._ You've appointed yourself my protector, well I damn well can do the same. You don't get to sneak around if I don't get to-"

"Sneak around with me," he said suddenly. His mouth fell open and he stared at her like he hadn't expected that one.

She tilted her head. Something dark was blooming inside her, waking up.

"That's what we do, that's how we beat this." Castle grew animated, his whole face lighting up. "I have the caution, and you have the brains. Together - right? You have to agree to that, Kate, or else you can't be-"

"Together," she said in a rush. It wasn't permission; it was a _lead_.

She had a lead on her mother's case, after all this time.

(A lead he had kept from her.)

—–


	38. Chapter 38

—–

"Okay, right," she conceded, leaning in against him. "But, what about when the file itself? I mean Montgomery-"

"Kate," he growled. "I told you everything I know. I have wracked my brains to come up with the least significant details. Give it a rest."

She huffed and sank back into her seat. "Fine."

"When we land, you are coming straight to the loft and I will put it up on the smart board and you can interrogate me all over again." He pulled the tray out from the armrest and pressed the flight attendant's call button. "For now, let's use this time a little more constructively."

"I was," she muttered, but turned to the woman who approached at Castle's call. "I need a drink. Have anything hard?"

The flight attendant didn't even bat an eye. "Yes, ma'am. Vodka, gin, whiskey-"

"Vodka and a little soda water," Kate answered.

"A whiskey and Coke for me," Castle added. "And something to snack on?"

"Meal service is in an hour," the woman told them, laying specialty napkins on their trays which were emblazoned with the Air France logo. "But we have extra salad and rolls."

"Both," Kate said, knowing Castle. She could graze; he'd want carbs. "Please. Thank you."

"Coming momentarily." The woman disappeared past the curtain and Kate turned to the man brooding beside her.

He rubbed a hand down his face. "I didn't mean that to sound like it did."

"I didn't mean to give you the third degree," she offered. She made a face and stared at the tv screen ahead of her. Luxurious didn't even begin to describe Air France's Premiere First Class cabins; Castle had upgraded them from Business to First Class when they'd gotten to the airport and it was worth it.

She had never experienced this before - and she hadn't taken a breath to even look around when they'd boarded. She hadn't looked right or left since she'd discovered Castle had a lead he'd kept to himself, and she realized she was being pretty damn ungrateful.

The seat was as wide and comfortable as one of the armchairs in her apartment, with a back pillow and massager, cashmere blanket, and complimentary bottle of champagne. The cabin had a convenient wide screen television mounted across from them and a little footrest with storage below. Reading material in the wall at his side, plus a shelf where all their complimentary accessories had been waiting for them.

A curtain could be pulled across the cabin, or a small half-door partition, depending on their needs. The television had played the security features, but now it was a clever movie in French with English subtitles that she hadn't even looked at once.

"Rick," she sighed, turning to him. His gaze flashed to hers, a bracing in his features as if he expected another interrogation. "Thank you. For this. It's really very…" She shook her head.

"Swank," he said, eyebrows wriggling, an ease across his shoulders as he leaned towards her.

 _Excessive_ had been her word. But he was so happy to do it, had been so thrilled he could get them a companion cabin in the luxurious Premiere seating.

The flight attendant came back with their drinks and beautifully presented snacks, and Kate waited until she left to show Castle just how much she appreciated it.

When he had taken the first sip of his drink, she slipped out of her seat with her tumbler in hand, and she stepped carefully over his sprawled legs.

He sat up straight when she did, let out a yelp when she lowered herself to his lap. She gave his groin a special little dig of her ass, and he gasped and clutched her around the waist. The drink sloshed on her jeans even as she folded her legs up into his wide seat.

"Rick."

"What are you-"

"We have an hour before they serve our meal," she murmured, twining her arm around his neck. Leaned in to ghost her lips against his, breathing lightly. And then she took a slow sip of her own drink to show him the work of her throat.

"We have an hour," he croaked, but he got in the game. His free hand roamed, found skin fast. "We have an hour and I've always wanted to join this pretty exclusive club. Maybe you've heard of it. Mile High-"

"I think that can be - arranged."

—–


	39. Chapter 39

—–

Well, turned out it couldn't really be arranged, even though she _tried._ For him, she tried for him. She really did. He was the one who finally stopped her, moaning into her back about how this wasn't fair, she was killing him, did she want him to die before they even got home?

In the end, his fingers and zippers and the flight attendant passing by their curtain every five seconds kept them both stymied. So she curled her knees up in his chair and settled beside him, hip to hip, to watch _Midnight in Paris_ on the television mounted across from them.

Even though she was a little sexually frustrated (she could cheerfully strangle that flight attendant for being so _helpful_ ), it was a different kind of hot to sit with her body wedged against his and his hand roaming her ribs and stomach and as far under her shirt as he could get.

She leaned her head against his shoulder and shifted a little more - to give him room, give herself a better position - and she teased her fingertips along the top of his thigh.

Back and forth, trading waves of arousal so poignant that one or the other of them had to stop, clutch wrists and choke _wait wait let me catch my breath_ before things could get out of hand.

It was her turn to gasp and nearly bend back his fingers, prying them from her breast and pressing his hand to her mouth, groaning into his flesh. He was chuckling in her ear about how fast he'd gotten to her, and she sank her teeth into his palm.

Castle grunted and laughed, wrapped his free arm around her, squeezing hard. "Little bit feral when you're backed in a corner."

"Backed into _your_ corner," she muttered, shifting to dig her ass into his thigh. He yelped and she laughed, but her laughter was cut short by the way he attacked her neck.

Oh, so good.

Damn, she could really use a hard fuck right now.

"Castle," she growled. "If this is the Mile High Club, count me _out_."

"Darn. So close," he laughed and gave up sucking hickeys into the slope of her neck. She shrugged her shoulder to get him off her, twisting in the chair. He loosened his arm and let her shift again, and now she was face to face with him, ignoring the movie.

His face turned sober, his eyes searching hers.

"Count me in, actually." She cupped his face in her hands and kissed him, light brief touches of her lips again and again. "Never want you to think I'm not."

"I know, I know," he said, in between brushes of her mouth. "You're okay, we're okay."

"I don't know what we do about the Twelfth, about your daughter, our worlds aren't the same and I-"

"Hush, Kate. We tackle it as it comes."

"Neither of us are coming," she sighed.

And he laughed, that bright delighted full laughter that made her toes curl and her face hurt she was smiling so hard.

She loved this man. And he loved her, had been loving her, even when she was the most messed up, the worst at communicating.

Oh God, she was going to fuck this up, wasn't she?

—–


	40. Chapter 40

—–

Touchdown at Newark. No bags to claim, so he was holding her hand loosely as they wound through the crowd, parting for the occasional gawking group of tourists or school trip daisy-chained across the wide terminal.

She could use another shower, some food, another night alone with him. Some clean clothes. The order was jumbled, she didn't know which ought to be done first, but the shower probably would be fun _with_ him rather than apart.

All good thoughts.

He hailed a cab rather than the Marriott airport shuttle she usually rode (and then walked nine blocks, but it was far less expensive). They sat nominally close, hands playing, her bottom lip caught between her teeth as he tried to push the envelope with respectability.

"This is my city," she murmured in warning.

"Mine too," he answered. "You think I don't have a reputation to maintain?"

She huffed, because this was part of his reputation. Or well, opposite really. He was supposed to be having a girl a week, playboy extraordinaire. "No, you really haven't worn the playboy persona since that first year, Castle. Don't pretend."

He was grinning in return. But his hands didn't stop their risque perusal.

He knew she loved it too.

At her apartment, he touched everything, picking up knickknacks and turning them over, inspecting her framed photos (oh, he was entirely too delighted by the one he found in her office, him of course, and she'd honestly forgotten it was there, so used to seeing it, letting it make her smile). He ran his finger over her books and pulled them off the shelf, looking for clever inscriptions.

She packed an overnight bag even as he hassled her to bring out the biggest suitcase. Three changes of clothes because she just didn't know, wasn't trying to assume (he told her _assume away_ but he had a family who might think differently), but the zip of electricity when she tucked toiletries into the side of the bag made her a little breathless.

He was a big ball of energy. Annoying and childish, bumping into her on purpose, mucking up her packing, dangling her underwear from a finger and wriggling his eyebrows.

"Stop," she laughed. "You moron. Come on. Carry this for me while I strap on."

"Strap on?" he croaked. The look on his face was hilarious. She hadn't done it on purpose, but she could roll with it.

"Why? Scared yet, Castle?"

"Terrified." Eager adorable silly man. "In the best best way."

"My gun, Castle." She shook her head. "Gun and badge. I have to be at work bright and early enough to head off Gates."

"Head off," he gasped, but he couldn't keep his composure. His knowing laughter broke the mask of dazed lover, and he hooked his arms around her waist, dragged her into him. "Like the way you think, Detective. I ever tell you that?"

"Repeatedly," she murmured, craning her neck at this angle just to make him kiss her. No innocent peck, but not the devastating hunger that had almost been painful back in London. "Which is why we're going to work together on my mom's case." Her whisper was for his ears only, but her desperation communicated itself.

"We will, we are," he assured. "I should have from the beginning-"

"No," she sighed, voicing the most terrible truth. "I think you were right to keep it from me. I don't know that I could have… put in the work I needed here." She caught his hand and pressed it to her chest, above the scar. "If I was constantly drowning in her murder."

"We'll drown together."

"No. Neither of us are drowning. That's what I did all this work _for_ , Castle. So I couldn't drag you down with me."

"Drag me down any day, Kate Beckett. The bed, the floor-"

She huffed at his constant need to diffuse her seriousness with his amusement. But it did make her feel a little less unworthy, a little more capable.

She hooked her arms around his neck, leaned back just enough to study his face.

How happy he was, how easily contented with what little she could give. She would have to remember that; she needed to keep that in mind. He asked so little, would never impose despite how he wormed his way into everything, that she would have to consciously offer more.

More. She'd been working on that all year. She knew what it looked like, had been living with it intimately, the effort of more. She'd been afraid that leaving their bubble across the ocean would mean the bubble would pop.

This wasn't London, but New York could be more.

"Rick?"

"Hm?" He'd apparently been content to gaze longingly at her in silence. Cute.

Handsome. Strong. Stubborn for her. "Take me out. Dinner somewhere. And then back to your place like we… like we should have done."

"But I thought we'd go over the new stuff on the case?"

"No. No drowning tonight."

He gave her a look of askance. "You're not still drunk somehow are you?"

She was grinning, speaking before she knew what was going to come out of her own mouth. "Drunk on your love, maybe."

"Oh God, that was atrocious, Kate Beckett." He was laughing, his arms tighter around her, his body thrilling to her despite what he'd said.

"And you loved it."

He sighed, dropped his forehead against hers with a crash. "I did. I'll lose all my literary cred - hard-won, mind you - but I loved it." He nudged a kiss under her eye. "I love you."

"I love you too."

—–

the end


End file.
